Abstract:
Through the use of telephone surveys and interactions with Georgia Chamber of Commerce members, this study measured the perceptions of key community stakeholders regarding the performance of law enforcement. Comparing the level of satisfaction and confidence with agencies that had attained a Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) Accreditation or Georgia State Certification with agencies that had not achieved any level of accreditation nor certification allowed the researcher to make conclusions about the benefits of attaining an accreditation or state certification. Another area examined in this study was the comparison of Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) to determine if the numbers were useful in determining the efficiency of a law enforcement agency. The comparison looked at five years of data with agencies that were accredited, certified, or had not attained either certification or accreditation.
By examining the UCR data, the researcher concluded that while there may be a benefit to collecting crime data, the results indicated no difference in crime rates across the three types of agencies. Based on the results from the telephone survey, the researcher was able to conclude the respondents indicated a higher level of satisfaction and confidence with the agencies that had attained either CALEA Accreditation or Georgia State Certification.
Keywords: certification, accreditation, satisfaction, confidence, citizen, law enforcement