A national study of the availability of law enforcement agency wellness programming for officers: A latent class analysis

• NCJ Number: 307583
• Journal: International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume: 24 Issue: 2 Dated: 2022 Pages: 175-189
• Author(s): Bruce G Taylor; Weiwei Liu; Elizabeth A. Mumford
• Date Published: 2022
• Length: 15 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2016-IJ-CX-0021
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Award: Law Enforcement Officers Safety and Wellness: A Multi-Level Study

Annotation

This study assessed the availability of law enforcement agency wellness programs.

Abstract

This study of the availability of employee wellness programs within law enforcement agencies (LEAs) across the United States, including physical fitness, resilience/wellness, coping skills, nutrition, mental health treatment, and substance use treatment, revealed that agencies offering broad program support are more likely to be large, municipal LEAs located in either the West, Midwest or Northeast (compared with the southern United States), and not experiencing a recent budget cut that impacted wellness programming.  The research team investigated whether patterns of LEA wellness programming are identifiable and, if so, what characteristics describe these patterns. The authors assess using latent class analysis whether there are distinct profiles of agencies with similar patterns offering different types of wellness programs and explore what characteristics distinguish agencies with certain profiles of wellness programming. Data were from a nationally representative sample of 1135 LEAs: 80.1% municipal, 18.6% county and 1.3% other agencies (state-level and Bureau of Indian Affairs LEAs). The authors found that many agencies (62%) offer no wellness programming. The authors also found that 23% have comprehensive wellness programming, and that another group of agencies specialize in specific wellness programming. About 14% of the agencies have a high probability of providing resilience coping skill education, mental health and/or substance use treatment services programming. About 1% of the agencies in the United States limit their programming to fitness and nutrition, indicating that fitness and nutrition programs are more likely to be offered in concert with other types of wellness programs. (Published Abstract Provided)