Getting in, but getting through? A 20-year national examination of the representation and success of women in the police academy

IF 2.3 1区社会学 Q1 CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY

Journal of Criminal Justice Pub Date : 2026-07-01 Epub Date: 2026-06-13 DOI:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2026.102687

Eugene A. Paoline III, Matt R. Nobles, John J. Sloan III

{"title":"Getting in, but getting through? A 20-year national examination of the representation and success of women in the police academy","authors":"Eugene A. Paoline III, Matt R. Nobles, John J. Sloan III","doi":"10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2026.102687","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Women remain underrepresented in U.S. policing, and academy-based basic law enforcement training (BLET) may function as an early gendered gateway into the occupation. Using all five waves of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLETA) (2002−2022), we constructed a longitudinal panel of 413 academies and examined gendered entry, completion, and non-completion over time. Descriptively, women comprised 17% of recruits overall, increasing to nearly 20% by 2022, yet women completed BLET at lower rates than men in every wave (81.6% vs. 88.1% pooled), with women's completion rates lowest in 2018 and 2022. Mixed-effects negative binomial models indicate that although many academy characteristics similarly predict non-completion for men and women, scenario-based assessment of trainees is uniquely associated with lower female non-completion. Findings suggest that recruitment gains for women may be offset by gendered academy attrition, underscoring the academy's role in shaping women's representation in policing.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48272,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Criminal Justice","volume":"105 ","pages":"Article 102687"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Criminal Justice","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235226000942","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/6/13 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Women remain underrepresented in U.S. policing, and academy-based basic law enforcement training (BLET) may function as an early gendered gateway into the occupation. Using all five waves of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Census of Law Enforcement Training Academies (CLETA) (2002−2022), we constructed a longitudinal panel of 413 academies and examined gendered entry, completion, and non-completion over time. Descriptively, women comprised 17% of recruits overall, increasing to nearly 20% by 2022, yet women completed BLET at lower rates than men in every wave (81.6% vs. 88.1% pooled), with women's completion rates lowest in 2018 and 2022. Mixed-effects negative binomial models indicate that although many academy characteristics similarly predict non-completion for men and women, scenario-based assessment of trainees is uniquely associated with lower female non-completion. Findings suggest that recruitment gains for women may be offset by gendered academy attrition, underscoring the academy's role in shaping women's representation in policing.

查看原文本刊更多论文

能进去，但不能通过？对妇女在警察学院的代表性和成功情况进行为期20年的全国考试

女性在美国警察中的比例仍然不足，以学院为基础的基本执法培训（BLET）可能是进入这一职业的早期性别门户。利用司法统计局执法培训学院（CLETA）（2002 - 2022）的所有五次普查，我们构建了一个由413所学院组成的纵向面板，并随着时间的推移检查了性别入学、完成和未完成的情况。总体而言，女性占新兵总数的17%，到2022年将增加到近20%，但女性在每一波BLET中的完成率都低于男性（81.6%对88.1%），女性完成率在2018年和2022年最低。混合效应负二项模型表明，尽管许多学院特征类似地预测了男性和女性的不完成情况，但基于场景的受训者评估与女性较低的不完成情况有独特的联系。研究结果表明，女性的招聘收益可能会被学院的性别流失所抵消，这突显了学院在塑造女性在警察中的代表性方面的作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Journal of Criminal Justice CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY-

CiteScore

6.90

自引率

9.10%

发文量

审稿时长

23 days

期刊介绍： The Journal of Criminal Justice is an international journal intended to fill the present need for the dissemination of new information, ideas and methods, to both practitioners and academicians in the criminal justice area. The Journal is concerned with all aspects of the criminal justice system in terms of their relationships to each other. Although materials are presented relating to crime and the individual elements of the criminal justice system, the emphasis of the Journal is to tie together the functioning of these elements and to illustrate the effects of their interactions. Articles that reflect the application of new disciplines or analytical methodologies to the problems of criminal justice are of special interest. Since the purpose of the Journal is to provide a forum for the dissemination of new ideas, new information, and the application of new methods to the problems and functions of the criminal justice system, the Journal emphasizes innovation and creative thought of the highest quality.