Provides a comprehensive and up-to-date look at a number of law enforce. stress programs that have made serious efforts to help departments, individual officers, civilian employees, and officers' families cope with the stresses of a law enforce. career. The report is based on 100 interviews with mental health practitioners, police administrators, union and assoc. officials, and line officers and their family members. Provides pragmatic suggestions that can help every police or sheriff's dep't. reduce the debilitating stress that so many officers experience and thereby help these officers do the job they entered law enforcement to perform -- protect the public.

Scores of talented and dedicated people serve the forensic science community, performing vitally important work. However, they are often constrained by lack of adequate resources, sound policies, and national support. It is clear that change and advancements, both systematic and scientific, are needed in a number of forensic science disciplines to ensure the reliability of work, establish enforceable standards, and promote best practices with consistent application. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward provides a detailed plan for addressing these needs and suggests the creation of a new government entity, the National Institute of Forensic Science, to establish and enforce standards within the forensic science community. The benefits of improving and regulating the forensic science disciplines are clear: assisting law enforcement officials, enhancing homeland security, and reducing the risk of wrongful conviction and exoneration. Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States gives a full account of what is needed to advance the forensic science disciplines, including upgrading of systems and organizational structures, better training, widespread adoption of uniform and enforceable best practices, and mandatory certification and accreditation programs. While this book provides an essential call-to-action for congress and policy makers, it also serves as a vital tool for law enforcement agencies, criminal prosecutors and attorneys, and forensic science educators.

Community justice is a phenomenon of growing interest among academics, policy makers, and criminal justice practitioners. In this book, leading scholars examine the central concerns of community justice.

Presents the proceedings of the Nat. Symposium on Police Integrity with participants including police chiefs, sheriffs, police researchers, police officers, members of other professional disciplines, community leaders, and members of other Federal agencies. Plenary sessions and working groups address integrity and ethics; challenges facing the law enforcement executive profession; the impact of police culture, leadership, and organization on integrity; how to effectively cope with influences in the police organization and culture and community; and the impact of internal systems and external forces on police integrity. Bibliography.

The movement toward community policing has gained momentum in recent years as police and community leaders search for more effective ways to promote public safety and to enhance the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Chiefs, sheriffs, and other policing officials are currently assessing what changes in orientation, organization, and operations will allow them to benefit the communities they serve by improving the quality of the services they provide.Community policing encompasses a variety of philosophical and practical approaches and is still evolving rapidly. Community policing strategies vary depending on the needs and responses of the communities involved; however, certain basic principles and considerations are common to all community policing efforts.To date, no succinct overview of community policing exists for practitioners who want to learn to use this wide-ranging approach to address the problems of crime and disorder in their communities. Understanding Community Policing, prepared by the Community Policing Consortium, is the beginning of an effort to bring community policing into focus. The document, while not a final product, assembles and examines the critical components of community policing to help foster the learning process and to structure the experimentation and modification required to make community policing work.Established and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), the Community Policing Consortium includes representatives from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the National Sheriffs' Association, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), and the Police Foundation. BJA gave the Consortium the task of developing a conceptual framework for community policing and assisting agencies in implementing community policing. The process was designed to be a learning experience, allowing police, community members, and policymakers to assess the effectiveness of different implementation procedures and the impact of community policing on local levels of crime, violence, fear, and other public-safety problems.