About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

13 J. Ethnicity Crim. Just. 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/wecj13 and id is 1 raw text is: 


Journal ofEthnicity in CriminalJustice, 13:1-15, 2015       Routledge
Copyright 0 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC                     Taylor& Francis Group
ISSN: 1537-7938 print / 1537-7946 online
DOI: 10.1080/15377938.2014.893220



       Measuring Diversity in Police Agencies


                   SALOMON ALCOCER GUAJARDO
      Department of Public Management, The City University of New York, New York,
                               New York, USA


     Despite numerous  studies on minority and female integration into
     police agencies, the use ofdiversity indices to benchmark and assess
     changes  in the ethnic and racial composition of police workforces
     has been  limited. This study applies the Simpson, McIntosh, and
     measure  of variation indices to data on the New York City Police
     Department's police and civilian workforces to obtain workforce di-
     versity measurements. Pearson and Spearman  correlation analyses
     show  that the 3 indices produce diversity measurements that are
     consistent with one another. Although the indices produce similar
     scores, the Simpson index is more efficient at measuring diversity
     and  less sensitive to the number of ethnic or racial categories used
     by the New York City Police Department in comparison to the McIn-
     tosh and measure  of variation indices.

     KEYTERMS      Minority integration, measure  of variation  (MV)
     index, McIntosh index, Simpson index, workforce diversity


Numerous   studies have assessed the integration of minority men and women
into police agencies (e.g., Harrington & Lonsway, 2004; Hochstedler, Regoli,
&  Poole, 1984; Martin, 2004; McCluskey &  McCluskey,  2004; Schulz, 2004;
Stokes & Scott, 1996; Walker, 1983, 1989; Winters, 1991). These studies show
that police agencies have increased the number  of minority officers within
their structures over time. These studies, however, have not assessed the
overall level of ethnic or racial diversity that existed in the police agencies
prior to the integration of minority officers. The studies have also not as-
sessed whether  the level of diversity within police agencies has increased
significantly from prior years as a result of hiring minority officers. As a


    Submitted March 2013; resubmitted May 2013; accepted July 2013.
    Address correspondence to Salomon Alcocer Guajardo, Department of Public Manage-
ment, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 445 West 59th
Street, Room 3536, New York, NY 10019. E-mail: sguajardo@jjay.cuny.edu


1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most