Policing is in a deepening crisis as the profession seeks to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of quality personnel to maintain effective staffing.

Many government agencies and professional associations have convened conferences, prepared studies, and released reports documenting the personnel crisis and proposing possible solutions to alleviate the problem. The dominant recommendations discussed in the last quarter century appear to have done little to resolve the situation. For policing to remain effective, the profession needs to substantially rethink how we recruit, train, and retain personnel, as well as how we think about them across the span of their careers. Reshuffling established recommendations are not likely to remedy the personnel crisis; it is time for innovative, nontraditional approaches.