Virtual Special Issue: Police Administrator Experiences and Decision-Making

This virtual special issue on Police Administrator Experiences and Decision-Making contains seven recent journal articles exploring a variety of views and opinions about police administrators’ tasks and experiences. Including voices of police administrators from four countries—Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States—these studies present a fresh take on a host of issues, from responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, handling strategic planning, and exchanging sensitive information, to sharing opinions about the use of body worn cameras and human trafficking.  

This special issue opens with an empirical exploration of Canadian police agencies’ strategic planning practices, including the determination of goals, adoption of activities, and allocation of resources, by McIntyre, Hodgkinson, and Caputo. In the second article, Yanich, Gibbs, Schally, Derrickson, and Howard use the mixed-methods approach to study the views about the adoption of body-worn cameras among police chiefs in a rarely studied segment of small and rural U.S. police agencies. The third article in this special issue, by Makin, Stohr, Unger, Howell, Parks, Willits, and Hemmens, zooms in on the ways police agencies in Washington state adopted their operation and organization to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Continuing with the theme of police agency’s adaptation in the fourth article, Abner, Merritt, and Boggs examine how police agency’s CALEA accreditation relates to, and potentially increases, the degree of organizational learning among the accredited police agencies. 

The special issue continues with the articles focusing on the specific aspects of police administrator experiences and decision-making. In the fifth article, Phythian, Kirby, and Swan-Keig study the views about and assessments of the intelligence-sharing among the delegates at the UK National Police Chiefs’ Council’s Intelligence Conference. The sixth article of this special issue, by Gibbs, Strohacker, and Schally, finds that the length of police tenure enhances police chiefs’ perceptions of human trafficking in small and rural police stations. In the last article in this special issue, Lynnyk, Fischbach, and Lepach study German police leaders’ feedback seeking and demonstrate that such behaviors tend to be related to the error-management climate in police agencies. 

In conclusion, the articles selected for this virtual special issue outline the critical approaches and explorations of a variety of topics related to police administrators. Studies bringing forward the views of police administrators are particularly valuable because they provide an insight into the experiences and opinions of those who regularly make decisions that significantly affect police agencies as a whole. The highlighted articles address research questions directly relevant for police administrators, policy makers, and academics and provide insightful police implications.  

The articles listed below are freely accessible from the 16th of September to the 16th of October 2024.

Professors Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovich and Wesley G. Jennings

Editors-in-Chief, Policing: An International Journal

Table of Contents

1)    McIntyre, M.L., Hodgkinson, T. and Caputo, T. (2023), "Strategic planning practices in policing: evidence from the field", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 46 No. 5/6, pp. 795-810. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-11-2022-0143/full/html

2)    Yanich, D.B., Gibbs, J.C., Schally, J.L., Derrickson, K. and Howard, D. (2024), "Decision to adopt body-worn cameras in small and rural Pennsylvania police departments", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 16-30. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-06-2023-0082/full/html

3)    Makin, D.A., Stohr, M.K., Unger, J., Howell, E., Parks, M., Willits, D. and Hemmens, C. (2023), "Documenting variability in operational and organizational experiences related to COVID-19 in Washington state", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 46 No. 3, pp. 441-460. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-09-2022-0121/full/html

4)    Abner, G., Merritt, C.C. and Boggs, R. (2024), "How can we help law enforcement agencies learn? A look at CALEA police accreditation", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 1-15. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-08-2023-0099/full/html

5)    Phythian, R., Kirby, S. and Swan-Keig, L. (2024), "Understanding how law enforcement agencies share information in an intelligence-led environment: how operational context influences different approaches", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 112-125. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-06-2023-0073/full/html

6)    Gibbs, J.C., Strohacker, E.R. and Schally, J.L. (2023), "Small and rural police chief perspectives on human trafficking in Pennsylvania", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 46 No. 3, pp. 521-534. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-01-2023-0015/full/html

7)    Lynnyk, A., Fischbach, A. and Lepach, M. (2024), "Police leaders' daily feedback-seeking: the role of an organization’s error-management climate, leaders' feedback orientation and the situation", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 66-81. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/PIJPSM-07-2023-0091/full/html