SUPPORTING STATEMENT
2022 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA)
Overview
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) requests clearance to conduct the 2022 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA). Historically, the CSLLEA generates an enumeration of all publicly funded state, county, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in the United States and provides complete personnel counts for the approximately 20,000 law enforcement agencies operating nationally.
For the purposes of the CSLLEA, a “law enforcement agency” is a publicly funded government entity responsible for enforcing laws, maintaining public order, and promoting public safety. To be within the scope of the CSLLEA, a law enforcement agency must employ the equivalent of at least one full-time sworn officer with general arrest powers.1 BJS has conducted the CSLLEA periodically since 1986, and the 2022 administration will be the eighth wave of data collection in the statistical series.
The CSLLEA collects information from local police departments, sheriffs’ offices, primary state law enforcement agencies, and special jurisdiction agencies. Local police departments include municipal, county, and regional police that are granted authority from the local governing body that created it. Sheriffs’ offices are generally empowered to enforce laws at the county level, while primary state agencies provide general law enforcement services statewide with a focus on highway and rural area enforcement. Special jurisdiction agencies provide law enforcement services in areas within a specific jurisdiction. They are usually full-service departments that have been granted law enforcement authority in tribal lands, parks, transportation assets (e.g., airports, subways), housing authorities, schools, hospitals, or government buildings.
The CSLLEA serves as the core of the law enforcement collections at BJS. The primary purpose of the CSLLEA is to provide personnel counts and the functions of all law enforcement agencies in the United States, and it receives high response rates (over 90%). The CSLLEA is the only national data collection that provides personnel counts by full-time or part-time status and sworn status. These data are frequently requested by practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders to compare similar law enforcement agencies and are also used in conjunction with other datasets such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
In addition to providing these key data, BJS also will use the CSLLEA as a frame for its law enforcement surveys, including the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) core (OMB 1121-0240) and supplements. The data captured on the CSLLEA instrument serve to inform which agencies may or may not be included in other surveys. For example, only general-purpose agencies are on the frame for LEMAS surveys. Using CSLLEA as a frame for this and other surveys means BJS does not have to burden agencies later to determine if they are in scope.
The 2022 CSLLEA is designed to collect general information on state, county, and local law enforcement agencies. The seven-item survey asks about the level of government that operates the agency, total operating budget, personnel counts, and the functions the agency performs on a regular or primary basis.
A. Justification
Necessity of Information Collection
Under Title 34, United States Code, Section 10132, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is directed to collect and analyze statistical information concerning the operation of the criminal justice system at the federal, state, tribal, and local levels. It disseminates high-quality information and statistics to inform policymakers, researchers, criminal justice practitioners, and the general public. The Criminal Justice Statistics Program encompasses a wide range of criminal justice topics, including victimization, law enforcement, prosecution, courts and sentencing, and corrections. Law enforcement agencies are the primary point of entry into the criminal justice system and play a crucial gatekeeping function in receiving reports of offenses, investigating crimes, making arrests, and detaining suspects. Subsequently, these agencies are a major provider of statistical data on crime.
The size, purposes, efficiency, fairness, and impact of law enforcement in the United States are ongoing national policy issues. Law enforcement agencies in the United States are numerous, diverse, and highly fragmented with substantial differences in size, role, and activities. Data collected during the 2008 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA) administration indicate there were 17,985 agencies operated by general-purpose agencies (i.e., any public agency with sworn officers whose patrol and enforcement responsibilities are primarily delimited by the boundaries of a municipal, county, or state government) and special-purpose agencies (e.g., campus law enforcement, transportation, natural resources, etc.). These law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million full-time personnel in 2008, including 765,000 sworn officers. The majority (69%) of U.S. law enforcement agencies employed fewer than 25 full-time sworn personnel in 2018 with less than half (40%) of these agencies having fewer than 10 full-time sworn personnel. Large agencies, those with 100 or more full-time sworn personnel, employed nearly two-thirds of the nation’s full-time sworn personnel (65%).
Agencies serve a variety of functions from patrol and response, criminal investigation, traffic and vehicle-related functions, detention-related functions, court-related functions, special public safety functions (e.g., animal control), task force participation, and specialized functions (e.g., search and rescue).
Collecting data on issues related to law enforcement personnel and functions is of critical concern to BJS, because its mission is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. Developing and maintaining an accurate picture of the nation’s law enforcement workforce is paramount to understanding the current state of policing in the United States. BJS has conducted establishment surveys of law enforcement agencies regularly since 1987, and the core of BJS’s law enforcement statistics program is the CSLLEA.
The proposed 2022 CSLLEA is the only systematic, national-level data collection providing a complete enumeration of the nation’s state and local publicly funded law enforcement agencies and counts of their personnel. In addition, the CSLLEA provides the basis for distinguishing among various types of law enforcement agencies by asking respondents to indicate the types of functions performed by the agency (e.g., law enforcement, investigation, jail management, court security, and process serving). Unlike other sources of law enforcement information, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Police Employee Data or the U.S. Census Bureau’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) collection (see Section 4), the CSLLEA provides additional data to supplement basic personnel counts, including a breakdown of agency functions.
Information collected through the CSLLEA can provide local area estimates of personnel counts and functions, and these statistics are essential for a better understanding of the landscape of American policing. These important statistics can be used to examine the correlates of crime and estimate the effect of law enforcement practices on crime rates. Agency-level data are needed to better understand law enforcement performance in terms of crime and victimization rates. In addition, an understanding of the number and functions of law enforcement personnel will assist in planning for public welfare response to national emergencies. During a disaster, law enforcement officers play a critical role in operations such as search and rescue, evacuations, door-to-door checks, and maintaining overall public safety. Information about the number of law enforcement personnel employed by agencies and the functions these agencies perform will aid in evaluating needs for national emergency preparedness. No other national data collection can provide comprehensive data on the services performed by law enforcement agencies.
Accurate counts of law enforcement personnel, as well as the type of agencies employing personnel, are necessary for implementing the majority of BJS’s law enforcement statistics program. Without these statistics, BJS could not produce national estimates on the organization and administration of police and sheriffs’ departments, including agency responsibilities, operating expenditures, job functions of sworn and civilian employees, demographic characteristics of sworn personnel, officer salaries, education and training requirements, equipment use, and policies.
The last administration of the CSLLEA was in 2018 (OMB approval obtained on 4/6/2018; 1121-0346). Prior to that, the CSLLEA was conducted in 2014, but the data were not publicly released due to data collection issues that were not able to be remedied and a lower-than-expected response rate due to survey length.
Due to the irreparable issues with the 2014 CSLLEA data, it could not be used as a frame for subsequent data collections. BJS addressed this frame issue by working with a new data collection agent, RTI International, to create the Law Enforcement Agency Roster (LEAR). Using the 2008 and 2014 CSLLEA universe as the base, the LEAR integrated multiple datasets in an effort to compile a complete list of active general-purpose law enforcement agencies. The goal of the LEAR was to serve as the universe list from which the samples for the 2016 LEMAS core and 2016 LEMAS supplement on body-worn cameras could be pulled.
The LEAR has been maintained since these 2016 LEMAS samples were pulled, and RTI also integrated special-purpose agencies to develop the frame for the 2018 CSLLEA. The LEAR has been updated based on responses to the 2018 CSLLEA and the 2020 LEMAS and now serves as the basis for the 2022 CSLLEA frame.
The primary goals of the proposed 2022 CSLLEA are to (1) develop a national roster of active publicly funded law enforcement agencies that employ the equivalent of one full-time sworn personnel to be used as a sampling frame for other collections, and (2) generate national statistics describing the size, characteristics, and functions of these agencies.
The first page of the 2022 CSLLEA (Attachment 1) captures basic descriptive information about the name, address, and Originating Agency Identifier (ORI), which can link the responses to past and future law enforcement organizational surveys. Information about the person completing the survey is also captured. This information directly addresses a 2009 review of BJS programs by the National Research Council, which recommended that BJS law enforcement surveys should “collect more information about law enforcement agency behavior and performance and enhance the use of agency identifiers to encourage the linkage of agency-specific organizational characteristics with agency specific-crime statistics and with the demographic characteristics of the jurisdictions served by each agency.”
These unique IDs will already be associated with each agency within the CSLLEA to allow for easy linkage to other datasets, including the LEMAS and past CSLLEA waves.
The proposed CSLLEA instrument (CJ-38; Attachment 1) includes seven items that fall into four categories:
Agency Geographic Jurisdiction (Q1-2)
Previous administrations of the CSLLEA (1986, 1992, 2000, 2014, and 2018) included an item that described the type of government that operated the agency or geographic jurisdiction covered by the agency (Q1). The item allows BJS to classify agency type, which is used for stratification to sample for other collections. It also allows BJS to examine the functions of law enforcement agencies across different types.
New to the 2022 CSLLEA, Q2 provides a definition of a multi-agency system and is intended for agencies that indicated in Q1 that they are operated by a state government or a special district or authority. Analysis of the 2018 CSLLEA showed that some agency relationships between these agency types led to duplication in the reporting of personnel. To address this issue, Q2 requests that any agency meeting the multi-agency system definition identify itself as either the primary or parent agency in the system or as a sub-component in the system. The parent/primary agencies are then asked to name their sub-components while sub-components are asked to name their parent/primary agency. These items will also allow BJS to identify potential duplication in responses received from multi-system agencies and more accurate data to be collected and released.
Operating Budget (Q3)
BJS will collect the total operating budget from each law enforcement agency for 2022 and 2021. This information is often used in conjunction with personnel size (authorized vs actual) to assess budget constraints. Budget is also used to determine optimal staffing sizes.
Functions (Q4)
The proposed 2022 CSLLEA instrument will indicate the type of functions performed including patrol and response, criminal investigation, traffic, detention-related, court-related services, forensic services, task force participation, and specialized functions. Detailed sub-functions in each of these sections will provide a descriptive overview of the various services and roles law enforcement agencies provide to the community and general criminal justice system.
Personnel (Q5-7)
The proposed 2022 CSLLEA instrument will collect detailed information on the number of full-time and part-time paid agency employees by sworn status (Q5). The CSLLEA will collect personnel counts for sworn officers with general arrest powers, officers with limited or no arrest powers, and non-sworn/civilian personnel in law enforcement agencies. These counts provide a general description of agency size and are used to identify changes in the number and type of personnel employed nationally.
In addition to providing a national enumeration of personnel employed by law enforcement agencies, the instrument will collect data on the sex of full-time personnel by sworn status (Q6). About 12% of full-time sworn officers in general-purpose agencies are female. The forthcoming 2018 CSLLEA report will provide the first estimate of female representation in special-purpose agencies, and the 2022 CSLLEA will provide an updated estimate. There has been increased attention on the number of women in law enforcement, and the CSLLEA will be able to provide this information for every law enforcement agency in the United States.
The item to collect the sex of personnel was revised between the 2018 and 2022 CSLLEA iterations. The 2018 item focused on full-time officers (sworn officers with general arrest powers and officers with limited or no arrest powers). For 2022, this item was expanded to include non-sworn/civilian personnel, which will allow BJS to generate estimates by sex on all types of full-time personnel employed by law enforcement agencies.
A new item was added to the 2022 CSLLEA (Q7) to collect the race and Hispanic origin of full-time sworn officers. There has been increased interest in the racial composition of law enforcement recently, and estimates were only available for general-purpose law enforcement agencies through the LEMAS. The CSLLEA will allow BJS to generate estimates by race across all types of law enforcement agencies.
The 2022 CSLLEA data collection will begin in September 2022 and end in June 2023. During this 9-month data collection, the instrument will be administered to approximately 20,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States.
Needs and Uses
BJS employs various methods to capture data to better understand the criminal justice system. For example, BJS captures data on crime from resident and inmate surveys and collects administrative data to supplement survey data where available. Data collections on agency characteristics are primarily conducted through establishment surveys, and this is the primary data collection vehicle for the law enforcement core collections. The CSLLEA is the only systematic establishment survey that produces local-level estimates of personnel and functions of almost every law enforcement agency in the United States.
BJS Needs and Uses
BJS has conducted establishment surveys of law enforcement agencies regularly since 1987. The core of BJS’s law enforcement statistics program is the CSLLEA. The primary goals of the CSLLEA are to (1) develop a national roster of active publicly funded law enforcement agencies that employ the equivalent of one full-time sworn personnel with general arrest powers, and (2) generate accurate and reliable national statistics describing the characteristics and functions of these agencies.
The primary use of the national law enforcement roster is to ensure an accurate universe of agencies for all BJS law enforcement programs, including the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) core and supplement surveys, Census of Publicly Funded Forensic Crime Laboratories (CPFFCL), and Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies (SCLEA). In addition, the roster generated from the 2022 CSLLEA will be used to update information in BJS’s Law Enforcement Agency Identifiers Crosswalk (LEAIC). The LEAIC is designed to link other data resources, such as crime counts from the FBI’s UCR program or U.S. Census Bureau data, to each law enforcement agency in the United States.
Since 1987, BJS has successfully implemented 10 waves of the LEMAS (OMB 1121-0240) core survey. The LEMAS core samples roughly 3,500 state and local agencies and provides national estimates about the characteristics of the approximately 15,300 state and local general-purpose law enforcement agencies; the functions they perform; the resources available to them; the number, type, and working conditions of their employees; the automation of agency functions and their information systems; the extent to which weapons are authorized and used; the formal policies that guide and restrict the behavior of sworn personnel; and the organizational responses utilized by these agencies to address contemporary law enforcement challenges. Agency type and the number of full-time sworn officers collected through the CSLLEA are needed to draw a representative sample of agencies for the LEMAS core survey.
Similar to LEMAS, the CPFFCL (OMB 1121-0269) collection relies on the CSLLEA for frame development. The CPFFCL is a survey administered to approximately 500 publicly funded forensic crime laboratories in the United States, a majority of which are connected to a law enforcement agency. BJS has conducted the CPFFCL periodically since 2002. The CSLLEA provides necessary information for developing the CPFFCL frame by identifying which law enforcement agencies run a forensic crime laboratory.
In addition to the general-purpose agencies captured in the LEMAS survey, the CSLLEA frame provides a means for identifying a variety of special-purpose agencies. Special jurisdiction law enforcement agencies are responsible for providing police services in areas within another jurisdiction. These types of agencies are usually full-service departments that are granted law enforcement authority in parks, transportation assets (e.g., airports, subways), housing authorities, schools, hospitals, or government buildings. The single largest type of special-purpose law enforcement agency is campus police, which BJS surveyed in 1995, 2005, and 2012. The 2021 SCLEA (OMB 1121-0334) is currently in the field and used the 2018 CSLLEA for frame development. The 2022 CSLLEA will provide personnel count updates for campus law enforcement agencies. The timing of the next SCLEA has not yet been determined, but the 2022 CSLLEA may be used in frame development for the next iteration.
The universe generated from the CSLLEA will also be used to update information in LEAIC. The LEAIC is designed to link other data resources to BJS law enforcement data and is used to associate local governments to law enforcement agencies to allocate the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program funding.
In addition to providing a universe of agencies to ensure an accurate sampling frame, the CSLLEA is a valuable source of descriptive information on the characteristics and trends in law enforcement employment in the United States. The administration of the 2022 CSLLEA will produce national statistics about the number of publicly funded law enforcement agencies, the number of sworn and non-sworn personnel, and the range of functions performed by those agencies during reference year 2022. These data will be used to produce multi-year trends regarding characteristics of state, local, and special-purpose law enforcement agencies.
Without the CSLLEA data, BJS will be unable to describe the functions performed by law enforcement agencies to the nation. For example, the CSLLEA provides concrete measures of the extent to which publicly funded law enforcement agencies can provide specialized services, such as crime analysis, bomb/explosives disposal, underwater recovery, and direct victim assistance or programs. The CSLLEA is also able to capture changing patterns of law enforcement personnel and functions that can then be used to develop more detailed collections or investigations through other vehicles.
The list below details the type of information that will be available through the 2022 CSLLEA data:
Number/percentages of law enforcement agencies by government entity
Rates/percentages of law enforcement agencies that are primarily responsible for law enforcement
Average total operating budget
Rates/percentages of agencies that regularly engage in the functions of patrol and response, criminal investigation, traffic and vehicle-related functions, detention, court, forensic services, special safety, task force, and specialized tasks
Number of full-time and part-time sworn officers with general arrest powers, officers with limited or no arrest powers, and non-sworn/civilian employees
Sex of full-time sworn personnel with general arrest powers, officers with limited or no arrest powers, and non-sworn/civilian personnel
Race and Hispanic origin of full-time sworn personnel
BJS will use the data gathered through the administration of the 2022 CSLLEA to disseminate information about law enforcement to the public. Past reports using the CSLLEA include (https://bjs.ojp.gov/data-collection/census-state-and-local-law-enforcement-agencies-csllea):
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018 (forthcoming)
National Sources of Law Enforcement Employee Data
Tribal Crime Data Collection Activities, 2012
Compendium of Tribal Crime Data, 2011
Hiring and Retention of State and Local Law Enforcement Officers, 2008
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008
Tribal Law Enforcement, 2008
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2004
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2000
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 1996
Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 1992
Uses of the CSLLEA by Others
The information generated from the CSLLEA is widely used and cited by law enforcement professionals and research communities. The statistics generated by the CSLLEA are requested and used by police chiefs, sheriffs, legislators, planners, researchers, and others to identify personnel and budgetary needs, trends, and priorities in law enforcement. The CSLLEA has been used to track employment trends in state and local law enforcement in the United States since 1992 and will continue to inform policymaking, planning, and budgeting at all levels of government.
According to the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data at the University of Michigan (NACJD), the CSLLEA data have been used in 78 academic publications.2 A majority of these publications have focused on the number of police departments in the United States and their size. For example, research in this area has examined the relationship between police agency size and crime clearance rates. The CSLLEA has also been used to characterize law enforcement agencies by the functions they perform, such as forensic services and serving tribal lands.
In addition to academic publications, BJS receives several information requests that can be fulfilled by the CSLLEA data. Uses of information include policy decisions, budget hearings, research and planning, market research, benchmark comparisons, grant applications, and journalistic purposes. BJS tracks the types of information requested that can be provided through its law enforcement data collections, as well as those requests that the data cannot fulfill. Since 2020, BJS responded to approximately 50 requests in which the CSLLEA data was referenced. Several of these inquiries asked about the status of the 2014 CSLLEA and if BJS had data newer than 2008 available. Examples of entities that have requested data since 2020 that could be fulfilled by the CSLLEA include:
ABC4 Salt Lake City, UT: Sought number of police departments in Utah
City of Fort Lauderdale: Sought the 50 largest sheriffs’ offices by number of full-time sworn personnel
Garland Police Department: Sought number of agencies responding to crime scenes for forensic processing
Crime in America: Sought the number of police officers in the United States
Houston Community Impact Newspaper: Sought update to the 2008 CSLLEA publication
Stateline: Sought the number of law enforcement officers by sex by state
Missouri Sheriff (Missouri Sheriffs’ Association trade magazine): Sought data on staffing in sheriffs’ offices
TIME Magazine: Sought data on the 10 largest police departments in the United States
West Virginia University Office of Health Affairs: Sought the number of state and local sworn officers in the state of West Virginia
Motorola Solutions: Sought update to the 2008 CSLLEA publication
Bain & Company: Sought update to the 2008 CSLLEA publication
Institute for Justice: Sought the number of agencies with a SWAT team in the United States
New Hampshire Public Radio: Sought breakdown of officers by sex in New Hampshire
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Sought demographic information on officers in the Chattanooga Police Department
Anticipated Products
BJS anticipates producing one primary report from the 2022 CSLLEA. Detailed information on the report to be produced is discussed under Section 16, Project Schedule.
At the time of the initial publication from the 2022 CSLLEA, BJS will release fully documented data files for public use through the NACJD.
Use of Information Technology
The 2022 CSLLEA uses a multi-mode design in which respondents are directed to a web survey through mailed and emailed instructions. The web survey is hosted by BJS’s data collection agent, RTI International (RTI).3
The instrument has been designed using commercially available survey software that will allow RTI to send an email to respondents explaining the CSLLEA survey and containing a hyperlink to the questionnaire. Respondents will access the survey website using a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) and password provided by RTI. Attachment 2 shows screenshots from the 2022 CSLLEA questionnaire and the page layouts that web respondents will encounter as they complete the survey.
The web survey application will incorporate consistency checks to validate data entries and machine edits that check for inconsistent, out-of-range, or missing responses. These automated processes will help ensure data quality and minimize respondent burden resulting from follow-up contact to resolve data discrepancies or other issues. Respondents will be able to start the survey, take a break, and later resume from the point in the survey where they last entered data. The survey software will allow for real-time online tracking of respondents, thereby allowing BJS to monitor the completion of each agency’s responses. In addition, the web system supports the export of survey data and paradata in various formats specified by BJS.
Agencies may have various reasons why they do not respond via the internet. For example, some might not have reliable internet access, and others might find it difficult to complete online because of the need to involve multiple people in preparing the response. Agencies that require paper access will have multiple methods of receiving paper versions of the instrument. Hard copies will be sent via mail during routine non-response follow-up. Agencies will be able to download a PDF version of the survey from the survey site that can be printed or e-mailed to agency staff. Respondents can then gather data in hard copy and enter it into the online survey instrument or scan and return the completed survey form via mail or e-mail.
To process completed hard copy surveys, RTI will use a software package that employs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to electronically convert scanned images of handwritten, typewritten, or printed text into machine-encoded text. Data captured via OCR will be manually reviewed to ensure accuracy. Use of this technology will minimize paper handling, reduce processing time, increase reliability, and enhance retention of written survey responses.
Upon completion of the project, the final dataset and supporting documentation will be made available to the public without restriction in an online archive in multiple statistical platform formats. Access to these data permits analysts to identify the specific responses of individual agencies and to conduct statistical analyses about law enforcement agencies. These data will have agency- and jurisdiction-specific identifiers that will permit public use in combination with other data files with similar identifiers.
The BJS-produced findings from the 2022 CSLLEA will be provided to the public in electronic format. The report will be available on the BJS website as a PDF file. BJS may also produce a web-based, interactive report and data analysis tool for the 2022 CSLLEA to increase the ease with which the public can access information about specific agencies or types of agencies.
Efforts to Identify Duplication
The three personnel count questions on the CSLLEA are also captured through the LEMAS. Item 5, which collects the number of full-time and part-time personnel by sworn status, is considered an essential item for both collections—it serves as the measure of agency size on the CSLLEA for sampling purposes and for reporting out results on both collections. The number of full-time sworn equivalent is calculated from this item and allows BJS to pull a stratified sample from the CSLLEA for our various law enforcement surveys. For the LEMAS, BJS uses FTE on our report tables. Due to fluctuations in staffing size year to year, BJS’s estimates rely on having an up-to-date FTE count.
The second item that overlaps on the CSLLEA and LEMAS is Item 6, which collects the sex of personnel. This was added to the CSLLEA for the first time in 2018. The LEMAS can only provide gender estimates for full-time sworn officers in general-purpose agencies. The 2022 CSLLEA will allow BJS to determine the proportion of female officers in special-purpose agencies and will also allow BJS to provide gender estimates for non-sworn/civilian personnel. No other data collection exists that can provide these statistics.
Based on our knowledge of the federal statistical system and law enforcement surveys, BJS has determined that the 2022 CSLLEA includes measures of the number of law enforcement personnel that are also included in five ongoing surveys by other Federal agencies:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) annually collects information from law enforcement agencies about the number and sex of sworn and non-sworn personnel as part of the “Number of Full-Time Law Enforcement Employees” (OMB No. 1110-0004).
The Census Bureau tabulates and publishes Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) information on the sex, race and ethnicity of persons who work in a protective service. This information is available for geographies that represent worksite and residence. This information has been based on the decennial census and more recently on the American Community Survey (OMB No. 0607-0810 & 0607-0936). This tabulation is sponsored by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Employment Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) at the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) “Occupational Employment Survey” (OMB No. 1220-0042) samples employers yearly about the number and race and Hispanic origin of employees in three Protective Service Occupation subcategories: 1) police and sheriffs’ patrol officers, 2) detectives and criminal investigators, and 3) first-line supervisors of police and detectives.
The EEOC biennially collects information from state and local governments on the number of employees who work in a protective service by salary, race/ethnicity, and sex. This information is collected as part of their State and Local Government Information Report (EEO-4; OMB No. 3046-0008).
The Census Bureau also collects data on the number of employees (and total payroll) of police protection agencies as part of its Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll (ASPEP; OMB No. 0607-0452).
CSLLEA vs. FBI Police Employee Data
BJS has identified four variables—the number of male sworn, male non-sworn, female sworn, and female non-sworn personnel—that are collected and reported by the FBI survey and by BJS in the CSLLEA.
BJS and FBI data collections differ on several key measures. First, the definition of law enforcement officer varies depending upon how the officer is funded at the agency. The FBI survey is limited to personnel paid “with law enforcement funds,” while the BJS surveys include all personnel regardless of what public funds pay their salaries. Second, the scope of agencies considered for inclusion in data collection efforts differs. BJS surveys capture all agencies that employ the equivalent (i.e., two part-time staff) of at least one full-time sworn person, while the FBI requires at least one full-time sworn staff member. Third, the data collection goals differ. The items about personnel in the FBI survey are collected in conjunction with annual data collections of hundreds of items about reported offenses and assaults on law enforcement officers. The FBI uses these data to report on offense, arrest, and assault rates per sworn personnel. Finally, BJS includes additional demographic variables (race and ethnicity) for sworn personnel.
These design elements lead to differences in the estimated number of total sworn officers, which persist over time across various waves of data collection. In the six years (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2018) for which both the FBI survey and the BJS CSLLEA were conducted, the FBI collected data from 3,600 to 5,200 (24.9%) fewer agencies and reported about 100,000 (10.0%) fewer total personnel. These differences are due in part to the different criteria for inclusion of agencies and personnel in these two surveys. Lastly, the FBI survey is limited to agencies that report to the FBI’s UCR program during a particular year.4,5
Personnel items included in the CSLLEA are used to provide the basis for computing the percentages of sworn personnel by law enforcement function. The CSLLEA also collects information about officers with limited or no arrest powers and part-time employees of law enforcement agencies, whereas the FBI does not.
To summarize, BJS and FBI data collections differ on several key measures:
Definition of law enforcement officer that varies depending upon how the officer is funded at the agency
Scope of agencies considered for inclusion in data collection efforts
Data collection goals
BJS includes additional demographic variables for sworn personnel
These design elements lead to differences in the estimated number of total sworn officers, which persist over time across various waves of data collection. The number of duplicate data collection items in the BJS and FBI data collection is small, and the information collected is necessary to meet the goals of each survey.
CSLLEA vs OES
Turning to the Occupational Employment Survey, both the BJS and BLS surveys report information about the number of law enforcement employees. The BLS survey emphasizes comparisons of the number of positions and their compensation among many occupation types across different geographical areas of the country. The samples and employee definitions used in these two surveys vary due to the differing purposes of the surveys. In law enforcement surveys, the distinction between sworn and non-sworn is crucial, but this distinction is not made in the BLS occupational sub-codes. Moreover, many law enforcement employees, such as forensic scientists or crime analysts, are unlikely to fit into any BLS occupational codes for protection service occupations.
As with the FBI survey, the number of duplicate items in the BJS and BLS surveys is small, and the items are needed for the internal purposes of the survey. The BJS data are collected and reported at the agency level and at the national level by type of agency. The BLS data are collected at the employer level, and three-year averages are reported at the SMSA level and the national level with no distinction among federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies. In addition, the CSLLEA collects information from special-purpose law enforcement agencies, which either are not collected in the BLS survey or are undifferentiated from other types of law enforcement.
CSLLEA vs. EEO
The EEO tabulations provide national estimates of the number of sworn and non-sworn personnel involved in protective services for state and local governments. With the EEO tabulations, it is not possible to disaggregate the law enforcement-related job codes that may be subsumed under the “protective service” heading. This dataset also provides geographic rather than agency staffing estimates. Estimates are provided for location of employment or residence rather than the law enforcement agency. CSLLEA data reflect place of work rather than location of work or place of residence. The EEO data are not granular enough to disaggregate the number of sworn officers working in local law enforcement versus sheriffs’ offices, and they do not provide a breakout by gender.
CSLLEA vs. EEOC
The EEOC’s data collection is insufficient to disaggregate the number of sworn versus non-sworn officers and is also insufficient to disaggregate those working in local law enforcement versus sheriffs’ offices. Similarly, while the EEOC data includes job function with protective service, a clear distinction does not exist between sworn and non-sworn officers. Data collected by the EEOC are reported only at the national level; individual responses are confidential and used for investigative purposes by the EEOC and the Department of Justice.
CSLLEA vs. ASPEP
Finally, the ASPEP data collection provides full-time and part-time employment and payroll estimates for persons with power of arrest within the police protection category, but the rest of the police protection category provides insufficient detail as to the work of sworn personnel and little to no detail on the job functions of non-sworn personnel.
Summary
BJS has identified five federally sponsored surveys with varying samples and measures of employees that can be used to estimate the number of law enforcement personnel in the United States. However, only BJS has a primary goal of creating national estimates of the number of law enforcement agencies and the number of sworn and non-sworn personnel. Furthermore, the CSLLEA is the only data source that provides gender of sworn officers with general arrest powers and officers with limited or no arrest powers based on the employing agency rather than residence for general and special-purpose agencies. This allows for national estimates at all jurisdiction levels: local, county, and state.
Efforts to Minimize Burden
Efforts to minimize burden have focused on three areas: extensive frame cleaning, instrument design, and support services.
RTI has conducted extensive frame cleaning efforts to ensure that only agencies within the scope of the CSLLEA are included in the frame. This effort has involved reviewing publicly accessible data, including agency and city websites, budgets, and meeting minutes of city councils, to determine which agencies are in-service, publicly funded, and have at least one full-time equivalent sworn officer. This work minimizes burden on out-of-scope agencies and other government agencies that would need to respond for agencies that are closed or out of service.
BJS has reviewed each CSLLEA instrument and the historical use of these items to ensure that the survey content addresses only those issues needed to achieve the core goals described in Section 2. Two items from the 2018 CSLLEA were dropped for 2022 because they had limited utility. The 2018 CSLLEA collected the number of full-time officers who served as school resource officers or whose primary duties were related to school safety. This question was included in the 2018 CSLLEA to develop a frame for a one-time data collection, the 2019 Survey of Law Enforcement Personnel in Schools (SLEPS; OMB 1121-0367).
The 2018 CSLLEA also collected the number of full-time officers that worked in specified major duty areas, such as law enforcement duties, jail-related duties, and court-related duties. This item was similar to the item asking for personnel counts by sworn status (Q5), as the personnel item included references to jail and court officers as examples. Due to this overlap, BJS determined that this question did not provide enough unique information beyond what is already collected in Q5 to justify keeping this item for 2022.
After careful consideration of the benefit of collecting the data versus the burden placed upon agencies, BJS added two new items for the 2022 CSLLEA in place of the dropped items. The addition of the multi-agency system question aims to reduce confusion and duplication of reporting for organizationally related agencies. The addition of personnel race was based on widespread interest in having more data on law enforcement demographics. Given respondents’ willingness to provide this data on the 2020 LEMAS, BJS expects that this is generally of minimal additional burden to respondents.
BJS expects that most respondents will make use of the online version to complete the survey. Several web-based system functions will be in place to ease the burden of survey completion. RTI will utilize an intelligent log-in program for data collection, which will store agency information and responses, allowing for multi-session completion of the survey instrument. Since agencies, particularly the larger ones, may need to send the survey to multiple people within the organization or use different databases to find data, this will reduce the burden on them by facilitating data entry from different people. It will also reduce the burden by allowing them to pause data entry pending confirmation of information from others in the agency. Automated response validations will also be performed as the respondent completes the online survey, providing immediate feedback if the responses are incomplete or do not conform with expectations; this will help minimize the need for follow-up with the respondent after survey submission.
A help desk will be staffed during normal business hours (Eastern Time) and will be available to respondents through a toll-free number and email address. Respondents may also receive a hard copy questionnaire, along with directions, by mail upon request. Additionally, respondents will be able to access a PDF version of the survey online, which can be printed. Once completed, this paper version of the survey can be used to enter data into the web-based survey instrument or can be returned via email, fax, or mail.
Consequences of Less Frequent Collection
Based in part on recommendations from the National Research Council, BJS has determined that it is necessary to establish a more regular schedule of future surveys of law enforcement agencies. To this end, a significant portion of BJS’s law enforcement data collection efforts have been combined into the Law Enforcement Core Statistics (LECS), which is comprised of the CSLLEA, LEMAS core, and LEMAS topical supplements. These data collection efforts will now share a common alternating schedule that will serve to reduce burden and increase the timeliness of data collection. Other BJS law enforcement surveys that use the CSLLEA frame have been incorporated into the schedule to minimize burden on law enforcement agencies that are invited to participate in those surveys. Table 1 shows the data collection schedule for these projects.
Table 1. Data collection schedule for the key law enforcement collections, 2020-2026
Collection |
Start of Data Collection |
2022 CSLLEA |
September 2022 |
2023 LEMAS supplement 2023 Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies 2024 LEMAS core |
September 2023 January 2024 September 2024 |
2026 CSLLEA |
September 2026 |
Conducting multiple surveys in a single year may lead to lower response rates and result in less precise and biased estimates for key survey items. Under the LECS model and taking into consideration other key BJS collections, only one survey administration using the same sample will be administered per year.
Special Circumstances
No special circumstances have been identified for this project.
Federal Register Publication and Outside Consultations
The research under this clearance is consistent with the guidelines in 5 C.F.R. § 1320.6. The 60-day notice for public commentary was published in the Federal Register, Volume 87, Number 63, pages 19137-19138 on Friday, April 1, 2022. In response to the 60-day notice, BJS received one request for the survey instrument. BJS did not receive any comments. The 30-day notice for public commentary was published in the Federal Register, Volume 87, Number 110, page 34906, on Wednesday, June 8, 2022.
Paying Respondents
Neither BJS nor RTI will provide any payment or gift of any type to respondents. Respondents will participate on a voluntary basis.
Assurance of Confidentiality
According to 34 U.S.C. 10134, the information gathered in this data collection shall be used only for statistical or research purposes and shall be gathered in a manner that precludes their use for law enforcement or any purpose relating to a particular individual other than statistical or research purposes. The data collected through the CSLLEA represent institutional characteristics of publicly administered law enforcement agencies. Information collected from these organizations is considered within the public domain. The fact that participation in this survey is voluntary and that information about individual agency responses will be available to the public is included on the first page of the survey instrument. However, BJS will not release the names, phone numbers, or email addresses of the actual persons responsible for completing the 2022 CSLLEA.
Justification for Sensitive Questions
No questions of a sensitive nature are proposed for the 2022 CSLLEA.
Estimate of Respondent Burden
BJS has estimated the respondent burden for the proposed 2022 CSLLEA at 15,667 hours (Table 2). This estimate is based on the results of cognitive interviewing done in preparation of the 2018 CSLLEA and changes in survey content reflected in the 2022 survey.
The 2018 CSLLEA had a 45-minute burden per respondent and included 83 variables; 28 required reporting of amounts and 55 required checking a single item. The 2022 CSLLEA has 87 variables: 28 requiring reporting amounts, 59 requiring checking a single item, and the agency name write-ins requested for respondents in multi-agency systems. The changes to the instrument for 2022 add approximately 2 minutes to the survey administration.
The 2018 CSLLEA burden calculation also included the average time devoted to contacting agencies beyond the survey collection either through verifying contact information during frame cleaning (if not available online) and/or direct follow-up contact after survey completion to resolve discrepancies or missing data. Total burden per respondent was calculated as 30 minutes for the 2018 survey and 15 minutes additional time pre- and post-survey.
The 2022 CSLLEA will include an experiment involving a random sample of 1,000 law enforcement agencies. The experiment entails the use of a prenotification letter to inform the agency head of the upcoming survey. The letter will provide credentials to log into the LECS website to update contact information for the agency head and provide similar information for a designated survey respondent. The burden associated with the experiment is estimated at 2 minutes per sampled law enforcement agency (total burden for the experiment is 33 hours).
Other than for the experimental condition, the 2022 CSLLEA will undertake the same pre- and post-survey activities as the 2018 CSLLEA, for a final breakdown of 32 minutes for the 2022 survey administration and 15 additional minutes for pre- and post-survey activities. Assuming a frame that includes approximately 20,000 agencies, the total burden for the 2022 CSLLEA is estimated to be 15,700 hours.
Table 2. Estimated Burden Hours for the 2022 CSLLEA
|
Sample size |
Average time to complete form |
Average time pre- and post-survey |
Total |
Reporting hours |
2022 CSLLEA |
20,000 |
0.53 |
0.25 |
0.78 |
15,667 |
Prenotification experiment |
1,000 |
|
0.03 |
0.03 |
33 |
Total |
|
|
|
|
15,700 |
Estimate of Respondent’s Cost Burden
BJS anticipates that one or more persons per surveyed agency will spend time reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Whether the response is provided by one or by more than one person, the average total burden for each agency is estimated to be 47 minutes. Assuming a pay rate approximately equivalent to the GS-12/01 level ($79,363 per year), the estimated agency cost of employee time would be approximately $29.88.
Approximately 20,000 agencies will be invited to participate in the 2022 CSLLEA. Based on the estimated time burden per response and employee pay rate, the total respondent employee time cost burden is estimated at $597,600.
There are no anticipated costs to respondents beyond the employee time expended during completion of the survey instrument and addressed above.
Costs to Federal Government
The 2022 CSLLEA is being developed and conducted under a multi-year cooperative agreement under the LECS program. Table 3 reflects the cost to administer the survey.
Table 3. Estimated costs for the 2022 CSLLEA
Category |
Cost |
|
BJS costs |
|
|
|
Staff salaries |
|
|
GS-13 Statistician (25%) |
$29,400 |
|
GS-15 Supervisory Statistician (3%) |
$4,500 |
|
GS-13 Editor (10%) |
$10,700 |
|
Other Editorial Staff |
$5,000 |
|
Front-Office Staff (GS-15 & Directors) |
$2,000 |
|
Subtotal salaries |
$51,600 |
|
Fringe benefits (28% of salaries) |
$14,400 |
|
Subtotal: Salary & fringe |
$66,000 |
|
Other administrative costs of salary & fringe (15%) |
$9,900 |
|
Subtotal: BJS costs |
$75,900 |
Data Collection Agent (RTI) |
|
|
|
Personnel (including fringe) |
$432,316 |
|
Travel |
$1,000 |
|
Supplies |
$0 |
|
Consultant/Contracts |
$321,130 |
|
Other |
$110,360 |
|
Total Indirect |
$383,113 |
|
Subtotal Data Collection Agent Costs |
$1,247,919 |
TOTAL COSTS |
$ 1,323,819 |
|
Reason for Change in Burden
The total burden estimate for the 2022 CSLLEA has increased by about 600 hours compared to the 2018 CSLLEA (Table 4). Although there are no burden hours associated with cognitive testing for the 2022 CSLLEA, as there were for the 2018 CSLLEA, the number of variables has increased for the 2022 survey. This increase in variables increased the average estimated burden by 2 minutes per agency. In addition, the 2022 survey prenotification experiment will add 33 hours to the total survey burden.
Table 4. Estimated Burden Hours for the 2018 CSLLEA and 2022 CSLLEA
|
Sample size |
Average time to complete form (hours) |
Average time pre- and post-survey (hours) |
Total average burden per agency (hours) |
Total burden hours |
2018 CSLLEA |
|||||
Cognitive interview |
48 |
0.50 |
1.00 |
1.50 |
72 |
2018 CSLLEA |
20,000 |
0.50 |
0.25 |
0.75 |
15,000 |
Total |
|
|
|
|
15,072 |
2022 CSLLEA |
|||||
2022 CSLLEA |
20,000 |
0.53 |
.025 |
0.78 |
15,667 |
Prenotification experiment |
1,000 |
|
.03 |
.03 |
33 |
Total |
|
|
|
|
15,700 |
Project Schedule
The data collection for 2022 CSLLEA is scheduled to begin in September 2022, with the prenotification correspondence being sent 2 to 3 weeks prior to the launch of data collection. The data collection period is 9 months. The design of the 2022 CSLLEA calls for the initiation of data analyses when the response rate hits 50%, although this program anticipates a final response rate over 95%.
Table 5 contains the project schedule.
Table 5. Project Schedule
Stage |
Type of contact |
Date |
Attachment Number |
CSLLEA informational website |
All |
-60 days |
-- |
Prenotification letter (with URL and login instructions) with letter of support, and CSLLEA flyer |
Experimental sample (n=1,000) |
-20 days |
22, 4, 5 |
Survey invitation letter (with URL and login instructions) with letter of support, CSLLEA study flyer, and agency point of contact update) |
All |
Day 1 |
3, 4, 5, 6 |
Email invitation with URL and login instructions |
All |
Day 7 |
7 |
Completion thank you |
All |
Variable |
21 |
First reminder letter |
Non-respondents |
Day 21 |
8 |
Second reminder email (with URL and login instructions) |
Non-respondents |
Day 28 |
9 |
Third reminder self-mailer (postcard, with URL and login instructions) |
Non-respondents |
Day 42 |
10 |
Fourth reminder letter (with paper survey and return envelope) |
Non-respondents |
Day 56 |
11, 1 |
Fifth reminder email (with URL and login instructions) |
Non-respondents |
Day 63 |
12 |
Sixth reminder letter (with URL and login instructions) |
Non-respondents |
Day 85 |
13 |
Seventh reminder letter (via UPS, with URL and login instructions; PO Box-only law enforcement agencies receive email version) |
Non-respondents |
Day 117 |
14 |
Telephone non-response contact |
Non-respondents |
Day 127 |
15 |
Eighth reminder email |
Non-respondents |
Day 148 |
16 |
Ninth reminder letter (with URL and login instructions) |
Non-respondents |
Day 176 |
17 |
Tenth reminder email |
Non-respondents |
Day 176 |
18 |
Final mailing (end-of-study letter) |
Non-respondents |
Day 225 |
19 |
Final messaging (end-of-study email) |
Non-respondents |
Day 225 |
20 |
Close data collection |
N/A |
Day 285 |
-- |
File cleaning and preparation |
N/A |
Months 9-12 |
-- |
Analysis |
N/A |
Months 12-18 |
-- |
Reports |
N/A |
Months 18-24 |
-- |
BJS will be responsible for the statistical analysis and publication of the data from the 2022 CSLLEA. Contingent on the processing and delivery of the final data file, BJS anticipates releasing a report by November 2024. BJS will release fully documented data files for public use through the NACJD at the time of the publication of the 2022 CSLLEA report.
The report, titled Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2022 will discuss personnel counts by state, agency type, sex, and race and Hispanic origin.
Display of Expiration Date
The expiration date will be shown on the survey form.
Exception to the Certificate Statement
BJS is not requesting an exception to the certification of this information collection.
1 A sworn officer with general arrest powers is a person formally authorized to make arrests for all crimes without geographic jurisdiction limitation while acting with the scope of explicit legal authority.
2 See https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/NACJD/search/publications?start=0&sort=TITLE_SORT%20asc&COLLECTION=DATA&SERIESQ=169&COLLECTION=DATA&ARCHIVE=NACJD&REF_TYPE_FACET=Journal%20Article&rows=50
3 BJS’s cooperative agreement with RTI for the 2022 CSLLEA was the result of a competition (FY 2019 Law Enforcement Core Statistics (LECS) Program, Solicitation, BJS-2019-15728; see https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/lecs_sol.pdf).
4 Reaves, B. (2011). Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
5 Banks, D., Hendrix, J., Hickman, M.J., & Kyckelhahn, T. (2016). National Sources of Law Enforcement Employment Data. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Howard Snyder |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2022-06-10 |