Police Apprenticeships for Youth Can Enhance Recruitment and the Quality of Officers While Lowering Costs

By Benjamin Klosky and Robert Lerman 

Police officers play a vital role in keeping communities safe and enforcing the law. Yet, recent years have witnessed increased retirements, high vacancy rates, and difficulties in recruiting cohorts of new officers. Public distrust of the police and concerns about excessive police violence have exacerbated the recruitment, training, and retention problems of police departments. Officers face extraordinary public scrutiny while remaining vigilant in fighting crime. Still, salaries and fringe benefits for police generally well exceed compensation for other professions that do not require a bachelor’s degree. This policy brief examines the potential for the apprenticeship model to attract a wide group of applicants, to enhance the quantity and quality of training, to improve selection into the full-time force and to do so without increasing department costs. We begin by reviewing the strengths and limitations of the standard recruitment, training, and retention practices that departments use. Next, we describe the police youth apprenticeship model, highlighting several of its key advantages. We then describe how the police department of Fairfax County, Virginia, implements the youth apprentice model to its advantage in recruitment, retention, and quality, and plausibly reduces costs in doing so. We conclude by arguing that police work is a natural fit for on-the-job learning and identify areas for further research into police apprenticeship. 

Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2024. 17p.