Race, Ethnicity and Basic Law Enforcement Training Non-Completion: A National-Level Examination of Police Academies

Abstract

Calls for the diversification of policing to better mirror communities served date to 1960s-era national commissions and continue to the present. Largely ignored in efforts to diversify policing is the role of race/ethnicity and completion of academy-based training of police recruits. This study used data collected from 615 U.S. basic law enforcement training (BLET) academies during 2018 to examine the correlates of BLET non-completion, including academy-level counts of racial/ethnic group membership of recruits, academy regional location, affiliation, stress of the training model used, and required weeks of BLET for state-level certification. Multivariate negative binomial regression modeling indicated that compared to non-completion counts of White non-Hispanic recruits, except for Asian non-Hispanic group members, the expected change in non-completion counts for members of all other racial/ethnic groups significantly increased holding all other variables in the model constant at their means. Implications for diversifying policing are discussed and recommendations made for further research.