Police Burnout is the synthesis of Dr. Fishkin's sixteen years experience as a police psychologist, and is a must read for all police officers, family members, police and public safety administrators, as well as mental health specialists who work in the area of law enforcement. It is a modern classic in the field of police psychology.

The Handbook of Police Psychology represents the contributions of over thirty police psychologists, all experts in their field, on the core subject matters of police psychology. Police psychology is broadly defined as the application of psychological principles and methods to law enforcement. This growing area includes topics such as screening and hiring of police officers; conducting screening for special squads (e.g., SWAT); fitness-for-duty evaluations; investigations, hostage negotiations; training and consultation, and stress counseling, among others. The book examines the beginnings of police psychology and early influences on the profession such as experimental investigations of psychological testing on police attitude and performance. Influential figures in the field of police psychology are discussed, including the nation’s first full-time police psychologist who served on the Los Angeles Police Department, and the first full-time police officer to earn a doctorate in psychology while still in uniform with the New York Police Department.

As we approach the 21st century, there is a discernable shift in policing, from an incident-driven perspective to a proactive problem solving stance often described as "community policing." In this volume a panel of 21 psychologists examine the changing directions in policing and how such changes impact on psychological service delivery and operational support to law enforcement agencies. The book describes existing and emerging means of providing psychological support to the law enforcement community in response to police needs to accommodate new technology, community-oriented problem solving technology, crime prevention, and sensitivity to community social changes. Senior psychologists who are sworn officers, federal agents and civilian employees of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies comprise the team of chapter authors. Their perspectives encompass their collective experience "in the trenches" and in law enforcement management and administrative support roles. They discuss traditional applications of psychology to police selection, training and promotion processes, and in trauma stress management and evaluation of fitness for duty. Concerns related to police diversity and police family issues are also addressed, as are unique aspects of police stress management. Additional chapters are dedicated to establishing psychological service functions that currently are less familiar to police agencies than they are to other government and private sector service recipients. These chapters are devoted to police psychologists as human resource professionals, as human factors experts in accommodating to new technology and to new legal requirements, as organizational behavioral experts, and as strategic planners. This text is recommended reading for two groups: *police and public safety administators whose work takes them--or should take them--into contact with police psychologists; *practicing and would-be police psychologists concerned with the emerging trends in the application of psychology to police and other public safety programs.

The police fight a different kind of war, and the enemy is the police officer's own civilian population: those who engage in crime, social indignity, and inhumane treatment of others. The result for the police officer is both physical and psychological battering, occasionally culminating in the officer sacrificing his or her life to protect others. This book focuses on the psychological impact of police civilian combat. During a police career, the men and women of police agencies are exposed to distressing events that go far beyond the experience of the ordinary citizen, and there is an increased need today to help police officers deal with these traumatic experiences. As police work becomes increasingly complex, this need will grow. Mental health and other professionals need to be made aware of the conditions and precipitants of trauma stress among the police. The goal of this book is to provide that important information. The book's perspective is based on the idea that trauma stress is a product of complex interaction of person, place, situation, support mechanisms, and interventions. To effectively communicate this to the reader, new conceptual and methodological considerations, essays on special groups in policing, and innovative ideas on recovery and treatment of trauma are presented. This information can be used to prevent or minimize trauma stress and to help in establishing improved support and therapeutic measures for police officers. Contributions in the book are from professionals who work with police officers, and in some cases those who are or have been police officers, to provide the reader with different perspectives. Chapters are grouped into three sections: conceptual and methodological issues, special police groups, and recovery and treatment. The book concludes with a discussion of issues and identifies future directions for conceptualization, assessment, intervention, and effective treatment of psychological trauma in policing.