The following is a brief summary of an article detailing some alarming trends in pre-employment psychological evaluations.
In Maine, we bestow the privilege of wearing a gun and a badge along with all the power that goes along with those tools to a select few of exceptionally qualified men and women. Once hired, the extensive training and education that follows prepares new-hires with the minimum standards to be entrusted with the public’s trust.
Successfully completing that gauntlet denotes an honor not all can achieve as evidenced by the high disqualification rates. The pre-employment psychological evaluation (PEPE) is the final hurdle in the process of hiring a new police officer in Maine. A properly conducted PEPE will help identify qualified candidates who are psychologically stable and suitable to comport themselves with integrity.
In a recently published article (Inwald and Thompson 2021) researchers investigating issues related to problems associated with candidate recruitment found some interesting if not disturbing trends. The authors approached the problem from the premise there are “fewer applicants” and/or “less qualified candidates” applying for police officer positions and possibly reflecting a larger or growing problem in recruitment efforts.
The authors conducted two surveys along with a one-year follow-up to identify the perceptions of working police/public safety psychologists. Based on their estimations, these psychologists perceived that up to 50% of the police agencies they worked with have lowered their officer selection standards in recent years, with 58% of the 2019 respondents reporting at least one of their departments had lowered its qualification standards in the previous 12 months.
The term, candidate disqualification rate refers to the number of candidates an evaluator “disqualifies” due to the candidate’s lack of psychological suitability and or stability required to perform the tasks of an armed police officer. The survey results indicate psychologists reported changes in their “current rate of candidate rejection” on PEPEs and their “desired rate of candidate rejection,” suggesting that police organizations may be attempting to hire more unqualified or potentially “psychologically-unfit” police officers in recent years in order to meet minimum staffing levels.
The study’s authors point to esteemed thinktanks like the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), for further evidence of the erosion in qualification standards. PERF conducted a survey of almost 400 police departments and found that 66% of the agencies have seen a decline in the police applicant pool (Jackman 2018). Unfortunately the decline in qualified police applicants is not just a small-town problem. The FBI reports a significant decline in applicants over the last decade (Viswanatha and Tau 2019). The FBI had more than 68,000 applicants in 2009 but only 11,500 in 2018. The FBI’s recruitment goal of 16,000 hasn’t been met in years.
The author’s survey reports 73% of the psychologists who answered the item, marked “Yes” to the statement: “In your opinion, the average quality of candidates significantly decreased/deteriorated in the past five years.”
Looking at current perceived rejection rates, the authors found the average to be 20% with a range from 1 to 50%. This was three percentage points higher than the reported/perceived mean initial rejection rate.
Seemingly in an attempt to have the evaluators include some clinical intuition in the PEPEs by making the process more personal, they were asked, “What is your desired rate of rejection based on your current candidate pool (where you’d be OK for that candidate/officer to appear when you or your favorite family member calls 911)?” the average preferred rejection rate increased to 26% from their reported 20% actual average rejection rate, with a range from 2.5 to 70% and a median preferred rate of 24%. up from the median actual rate of 15%.
Reviewing these results, one could speculate the evaluating psychologists failed to disqualify candidates due to some sense of urgency communicated to them by their respective departments. Where a candidate’s data had some room for clinical interpretation it could be the psychologists skewed their own perspectives in favor of passing a candidate, but in hindsight, they wished they hadn’t done so. Perhaps researchers will attempt to ferret this question out in a future study.
The authors asked, “In your opinion, what is the percentage of your departments that have lowered standards for offering a police/public safety position to applicants since you began conducting PEPEs?” and 40 psychologists answered with an average of 51% of departments and a range from 0% to 100%. The median percentage rate was 50%, suggesting psychologists perceive, on average, half of their represented police departments have lowered their standards over time.
To their credit, the authors attempted to discern what the evaluators were identifying as causes for candidate disqualifications and found that “acting out” behaviors, like drug use, impulsivity, and antisocial patterns of behavior, were the primary areas that psychologists perceived as being the most problematic for applicants (46%). But nearly a quarter of the respondents (23%) suggested assertiveness and maturity issues were a problem. The remaining problematic personality and behavioral characteristics included defensiveness (10%), lack of motivation (7%), cognitive/academic issues (7%), and mental health history (5%).
As the article adeptly points out, with law enforcement agencies across the nation lowering the hiring-bar for police candidates, those of us here at the MCRS believe it will be crucial to public safety to evaluate what the fallout is as a result of the less stringent hiring criteria. Since we are focused on law enforcement, it seems the law of unintended consequences should be evaluated in this case. Some concerns include an increase in crime rates, abuse of force complaints, and the erosion of public trust to name but a few.
A careful assessment of the consequences and possible solutions is especially important if the documented perception that agencies are hiring an increased percentage of psychologically “borderline” or “unfit” police officers is determined to be a reality. For example, the authors point to one responding psychologist who reported his agency was requiring so much overtime work from its police officers due to staffing shortages that some police officers were submitting letters from their physicians, claiming trauma/stress-related illnesses as a result. It seems departments are desperate to fill staffing vacancies with forced overtime and as a result police officers are struggling to maintain their wellbeing. As an aside, given the well-documented prevalence of chronic sleep deprivation found within law enforcement it is easy to see how forced overtime exacerbates sleep deprivation and the associated health problems.
Inwald, R, Thompson, N (2021) A 2018-2019 Snapshot of Psychological Screening Rejection Rates: Perceived Trends Reported by Police/Public Safety Psychologists. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology (2021) 36:149-158
Jackman T (2018) Who wants to be a police officer? Job applications plummet at most U.S. departments. Retrieved from https:I/www. washingtonpost.com/crimelaw/20 18/12/04/who-wants-be-policeofficer-job-applications-plummet-most-us-departments/. Accessed 2019 and 2020
Viswanatha A, Tau B (2019) FBI’s most wanted: more applicants for special agents. Retrieved from https:Ilwww.wsj.comlarticles/ fbismost-wanted-more-applicantsfor-special-agents-1 1551023975. Accessed 2019 and 2020