Is a seat at the table sufficient? Specialized unit participation and perspectives of female law enforcement officers

ABSTRACT

Over the past few decades, the presence of women on specialized units has become more commonplace. Despite this, they are still under-represented, especially among traditionally male-dominated units. This exploratory study surveyed 76 female law enforcement officers to gauge the types of specialized units in which they participate and assess their perceptions about working in a male dominated field. Results indicated that while a large portion of the women in our sample were in specialized units, they were more likely to work in units that fit their gender stereotype. Further analyses revealed striking trends among those women more recently hired in terms of their perception about fitting in specialized units and the number and types of units in which they participate. Implications for law enforcement practitioners, suggestions to overcome continued gender inequality in specialized units and recommendations to expand this research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Women in law enforcement
• specialized units
• survey research
• perceptions and attitudes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Wording of the Facebook recruitment message: ‘A research intern has created a brief survey for women in law enforcement. The survey is anonymous. If there are any female officers, particularly those that have and currently do serve in a specialized unit, who would be willing to assist a student in her research, please click the link below. She needs as much participation as possible’.

2. Special Operations Division refers to narcotics, gangs, vice and/or field intelligence. It was referred to in this manner because each agency calls these units by a different name and this was intended to be an umbrella term.

3. The women in our sample wrote in a few other types of specialized units but each unit was mentioned only once, thus those units were not included in Table 1 or 2 or mentioned in the results.

4. Multicollinearity was checked for each regression and VIF and tolerance scores did not indicate the presence of multicollinearity in any of the regressions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leslie Hill

Leslie Hill, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, The Citadel Leslie Hill is an Assistant Professor at the Citadel. She teaches Corrections, Introduction to Criminal Justice, Human Trafficking, and runs the Internship Program for the Department of Criminal Justice. She is also the faculty advisor for the National Criminal Justice Honor Society working with undergraduate students to develop their own research projects. Her research interests are as follows: prisoner re-entry, quantitative statistics, research methods, prison animal programs and human trafficking. Her work can be seen in the Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research, the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, among others.

Jacquelyn Theriault

Jacquelyn Theriault, The Citadel Jacquelyn Theriault graduated from the Citadel in 2020 and majored in Criminal Justice. While at the Citadel she partook in an internship with the Charleston Police Department in which she developed and completed her own research project focusing on women in specialized units. Upon completion of her research project she presented her work at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences annual conference in 2020. She is currently attending flight school to become a pilot.

Terry Cherry

Terry Cherry, Senior Police Officer & Recruiter, Charleston Police Department, LEADS Scholar Senior Police Officer Cherry has been with the Charleston Police Department in Charleston, South Carolina for over nine years and is currently serving as the agency’s recruiter. She has applied evidence-based policing to drive changes in recruitment processes, policies, and marketing efforts. In 2020, she was selected as a NIJ LEADS scholar and was the recipient of IACP’s 40 under 40. She is currently on the working group of the National Police Foundation’s Council for Police Reforms and Race and was recently selected to receive the NAWLEE Ina Mae ‘Tiny’ Miller Award. Her articles have been published in IACP Police Chief Magazine and online for Police1. Officer Cherry holds a BA from UCLA and an MBA in global business from Pepperdine University.

Wendy Stiver

Wendy Stiver, Director of Research and Procedural Justice, Charleston Police Department, LEADS Scholar Wendy Stiver is the Director of Research and Procedural Justice at the Charleston Police Department. She has a long career in law enforcement including reaching the rank of Major at the Dayton Police Department and working as a Protective Agent for the US Army Military Police. She has also been an Adjunct Instructor in Applied Behavioral Sciences at Wright State University and was selected as an NIJ LEADS scholar in 2016.