Police Legal Advisors in the USA: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Over the last three decades police work has become very complex due to continuous change in criminal law, social change, and an increased demand for police accountability and professionalism. In response to those changes, some law enforcement agencies have adopted in‐house police legal advisors as part of their police liability management efforts. This paper provides a look at the past and present use of police legal advisors in law enforcement agencies in the USA. The history of police legal advisors in the USA is presented through a review of past literature. To provide a look at the current state of police legal advisors, this paper presents the findings of a recent national study of police legal advisors in US law enforcement agencies. Using telephone interviews with 354 large law enforcement agencies, as well as qualitative survey data, this study reveals that less than half of the largest law enforcement agencies in the USA employ an in‐house police legal advisor. Several factors that influence the adoption of police legal advisors within police agencies are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Liability
• Police Legal Advisors
• Police Accountability

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the following individuals for their feedback throughout the course of this study: Mr Gerald M. Caplan of the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, California; Dr Samuel E. Walker of the University of Nebraska–Omaha; Dr Herman Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Law School; and Mr Wayne Schmidt of the Americans for Effective Law Enforcement Inc. in Park Ridge, Illinois. I would also like to thank Dr Melissa Schrift and Dr Jane Peterson for providing feedback on a rough draft of this manuscript.

Notes

[1] The LEMAS data have limitations due to the nature of mail surveys. For a description of some of the limitations to the LEMAS data, see Walker and Katz (1995).

[2] Qualitative samples are often small compared to samples used in quantitative studies, but usually generate large amounts of textual, descriptive data. For more details on qualitative sample sizes see Miles and Huberman (1994). It is also important to note that one of the results of using a small sample in qualitative research is a limited level of generalizability of the findings of qualitative studies. This is the case with the present study as only one‐third of the surveys were returned for analysis.

[3] It is likely that police legal advisors and city/county attorneys work together on legal issues involving local law enforcement. However, the scope of the current study is to focus solely on how police legal advisors play a role in American police agencies. Future research should examine how city/county attorneys and legal advisors work together.

[4] Telephone interviews with both Herman Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Wayne Schmidt of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in May 2001.

[5] Telephone interviews with both Herman Goldstein and Wayne Schmidt in May 2001, and also through exhaustive searches on the Internet.

[6] A scan of the table of contents of 10 leading police management and police administration textbooks revealed that police legal advisors were not mentioned as an important part of modern police management. This observation is important because it reflects the lack of information available for both police scholars and practitioners on this topic of study.