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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:39 am
Time: 11:39 am
Results for academy training
1 results foundAuthor: Rojek, Jeff Title: South Carolina Law Enforcement Training Survey: A National and State Analysis Summary: he present study examines the current state of law enforcement recruit training for municipal and sheriff's departments in South Carolina by addressing three questions. First, how does the state mandated training of South Carolina compare to the standards of other states? Second, what agencies within the state of South Carolina provide additional training for recruits before they enter the field, and what is the nature of this training? Third, what agencies within the state of South Carolina place their recruits through a field training program, and what are the characteristics of these programs? The data for answering these questions were captured through two collection mechanisms, both of which took place in December 2006. Data for the comparison of state mandated training were gathered with a survey of the Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commissions or equivalent entity in each state. The data on the training efforts of South Carolina agencies were collected by surveying a sample 65 agencies, which represents 27.7% of municipal and county departments in the state. The overall sample was derived from a two stage sampling process. The first stage involved selecting a sample of 20 agencies from agencies in the state that had 75 or more officers/deputies. The second sample of 45 agencies was randomly drawn from the remaining agencies in the state with less than 75 commissioned officers or deputies. A total of 47 agencies responded to the two waves of surveys, representing a 72.3% response rate. There were 33 municipal agencies (70.2%) among these responding agencies and 14 sheriff's departments (29.8%). The current survey of law enforcement training standards across the country and among a sample of South Carolina law enforcement agencies clearly shows that the State of South Carolina has fallen far behind national norms in its commitment to basic law enforcement training. South Carolina's 349 hours of basic academy training, which equates to a mere nine weeks, was more than 40 percent below the national and southern region medians from 2006. In 1972, South Carolina ranked 14th in the nation in its number of state-mandated basic training hours. In 2006, our state ranked second only to Louisiana in requiring the fewest number of basic training hours for law enforcement certification. The problem is not only with the lack of total hours, however. South Carolina also has not kept pace with national standards with respect to basic academy course content. In South Carolina, for example, law enforcement recruits receive no dedicated training in community policing, problem-solving, or even first aid. By way of comparison, a 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of the nation's law enforcement academies reported that 90 percent of the responding academies provided training in community policing, 64 percent in problem-solving, and 99 percent in basic first aid and CPR. Nor are most agencies themselves making up for these curriculum deficiencies. Only 36 percent of the South Carolina agencies surveyed reported that they provide any post-academy basic training to new recruits. The results from the field training portion of the survey depict a wide gulf between large and small agencies in South Carolina regarding field training practices. The median number of field training hours (475 hours) among South Carolina agencies with 100 or more officers is only slightly less than the required number of field training hours in the Austin (TX) Police Department, which has the lowest number of required hours among six agencies used as a benchmark for comparative purposes in the present analysis. However, the median number of required field training hours among smaller South Carolina agencies drops off precipitously and stands at only 60 hours for agencies with 20 or fewer officers. In many of these small agencies, new officers receive an inadequate nine weeks of basic training at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy and then are handed the keys to a patrol car and told to report for duty. They receive no on-the-job field training at all. To be sure, this lack of field training in small agencies is a problem in other states as well, but it is exacerbated in South Carolina because of the insufficient training received by recruit officers at the basic academy. New law enforcement officers and the citizens of South Carolina are being ill-served by the lack of resources and attention given to basic law enforcement training in our state. Improving South Carolina's deficiencies in basic law enforcement training will require, at a minimum, a thorough review and overhaul of the state Law Enforcement Training Council certification standards and the basic Criminal Justice Academy curriculum. These efforts to bring South Carolina's law enforcement training standards up to national norms should result in a substantially longer basic academy, adding critical subject areas, and mandating field training for all new officers. Based on the results from this study, the following policy recommendations are offered: - The Law Enforcement Training Council, with appropriate funding, should immediately undertake a comprehensive review and comparison of the South Carolina basic training standards to those in other states and among the nation's leading law enforcement agencies. - Following this review, the Training Council should commission a new draft curriculum that would bring South Carolina to the forefront of national standards in basic law enforcement training. - While the new curriculum is being prepared, discussion must begin in the South Carolina legislature and among the state's policy-makers on how best to fund a modern law enforcement training system that can meet the demands of 21st century policing in South Carolina. - Policy-makers should consider all available options, including legislation that would permit regional and stand-alone academies for those political subdivisions willing to pay for them. - At the same time, lawmakers should pass legislation that would mandate the training hours reflected in the new basic law enforcement curriculum drafted by the Training Council and that would require a reasonable number of field training hours for all new officers. As South Carolina positions itself for economic growth and development in the 21st century, it must not give short-shrift to its public safety needs. Chief among those are the need to train its law enforcement personnel in accordance with best practices. The current state of basic law enforcement training in South Carolina, however, is far below national norms and is in need of reform. Details: Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 2007. 46p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 26, 2017 at: https://artsandsciences.sc.edu/crju/sites/sc.edu.crju/files/attachments/trainingreport.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: https://artsandsciences.sc.edu/crju/sites/sc.edu.crju/files/attachments/trainingreport.pdf Shelf Number: 146387 Keywords: Academy TrainingLaw Enforcement TrainingRecruit TrainingSheriffs |