MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY POLICE STAFFING OBSERVATORY: A RESOURCE FOR POLICE WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT
Jeremy M. Wilson, Ph. D., Director and Professor, MSU Police Staffing Observatory
May 2026
organization as it relates to staffing. The PSO prioritizes comprehensive strategies over short-term,“ band-aid” solutions that fail to address underlying challenges. For example, we
PSO Partners Ethan Humphrey and Terry Cherry and Director Jeremy Wilson share findings at the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing conference.
The Staffing Challenge is Complex and Dynamic The law enforcement community is confronting many persistent and evolving workforce challenges. These include a shrinking pool of qualified applicants, shifting generational preferences, competition, burnout, turnover, and rising workload demands. These challenges are complex and require context-specific solutions to effectively align resources with agency goals and community preferences.
Within each agency’ s unique context, it is critical to consider various workforce elements in strategy development, including recruitment, retention, training, workload, efficiency, succession planning, culture, leadership, and performance objectives. These elements are interconnected, meaning advantages or challenges in one area can enhance or undermine outcomes in others. This interdependence underscores the need for a systems-based approach to staffing. Simply increasing hiring is not always enough to make meaningful impacts.
The Police Staffing Observatory is a Trusted Resource To assist agencies in navigating these multifaceted workforce challenges, the Police Staffing Observatory( PSO) applies a systems approach to staffing, seeking holistic, long-term, and meaningful impacts. In other words, our work considers the full scope of a police l ff h
• seek to understand nuances to staffing allocation and deployment, balancing workload and performance objectives, to develop practical and replicable methods and tools that practitioners can use to guide their resource planning.
• examine recruitment alongside retention, recognizing that improvement in one without regard for the other is counterproductive and unsustainable.
• emphasize factors beyond the number of personnel, focusing on how staff are used, such as through workload management and resource optimization, viewing these as opportunities to do more with existing resources.
• consider the downstream effects of strategies such as succession planning and cohort management, understanding that these approaches can shape long-term staffing stability and organizational effectiveness in ways that are not always visible.
Housed within the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, the PSO rallies researchers, practitioners, policy experts, and students to provide strategic solutions, collaboration, and evidence-based guidance. A key priority of the PSO is translating research into practical strategies that agencies can realistically implement to overcome challenges. Our work aims to influence the national dialogue by:
• Housing, disseminating, and translating evidence-based research findings to increase ease of access and digestibility
• Developing policy guides centered on actionable strategies and investigating national staffing dilemmas
• Hosting forums and discussions that facilitate learning and insights for both practitioners and academics
• Encouraging stakeholders to consider acute and long-standing staffing issues in unique ways to drive innovation
• Connecting researchers and practitioners to develop partnerships and provide technical assistance.
We strive to make our work as accessible and actionable as possible by:
• Featuring collaborators and their published work on our Website
• Disseminating timely resources and making announcements via LinkedIn( be sure to follow)
• Establishing a newsletter to share information, ideas, and opportunities( join the list by writing to PSO. info @ msu. edu) Presenting findings at a wide range of practitioner-, policy-, and academicoriented conferences, summits and workshops.
The PSO’ s Work is Evidence-Based, Relevant, and Accessible The PSO has developed and compiled more than 200 research articles, guidebooks, reports, association articles, and research briefs, all of which can be found under recent publications on the PSO website.
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