Police Accreditation: Learning About CALEA

We talk to police agencies all across the US on a daily basis and frequently come across CALEA accreditation badges normally located on the homepage of a police department’s website. 

What is CALEA?
CALEA stands for Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and was created in 1979 by 4 agencies - 

IACP - International Association of Chiefs of Police (a subscription based membership)

NOBLE - National Organization of Black Law Enforcement (a subscription based membership)

NSA - National Sheriffs Association (a subscription based membership)

PERF - Police Executive Research Forum (a subscription based membership)

It is run by a composition of a 21 member commission board where 11 members are selected from law enforcement and 10 members are selected from the public and private sectors.

What does CALEA do?

CALEA specifically states the standards they’ve created prescribe what agencies should be doing, but do not set standards on how they should be doing it.

The purpose of CALEA is to improve law enforcement by creating a national body of standards on best professional practices for agencies to follow. The standards were created in order to help agencies:

• Strengthen crime prevention and control capabilities
• Formalize essential management procedures
• Establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices
• Improve service-delivery
• Solidify interagency cooperation and coordination
• Boost citizen and staff confidence in the agency

There are 484 CALEA standards. Agencies can choose to be a ‘Tier 1’ member and select to follow a list of 141 standards, or they can choose to be a ‘Tier 2’ member and follow all 484 standards. 

There are standards for things like use of force, disciplinary procedures, recruitment, and training and career development. You can view all 484 standards here. 

CALEA COST

# Full-Time Employees	Initial Cost	Annual Fee	Total after 5 years
1-24	$8,475 - $8,710	$3,470	$22,355 - $22,590
25-199	$11,450 - $11,820	$4,065	$27,710 - $28,080
200-999	$16,125 - $16,740	$5,000	$36,125 - $36,740
1000-up	$19,950 - $20,745	$5,765	$43,010 - $43,805

*The annual fee includes an assessor visiting the police department every 4 years.

CALEA comes with a monetary cost. CALEA accreditation is not mandatory, but neither are programs like UCR and NIBRS. 

The big difference between an accreditation program like CALEA and UCR/NIBRS is the membership fees. 

UCR/NIBRS does not request that the police department to fork up money, just monthly datasets. And participation in UCR/NIBRS promises the police department some sort of federal funding in return for participating.

The police department has to pay an initial fee and then an annual fee to keep their CALEA accreditation.

So, what does CALEA give back to agencies in return if it’s not funding? Like any accreditation program and similar to college and university academic accreditation, CALEA can validate how a police agency operates. 

CALEA benefits (as stated on the CALEA website) include:

• Greater accountability within the agency
• Reduced risk and liability exposure
• Stronger defense against civil lawsuits
• Staunch support from government officials
• Increased community advocacy

The data CALEA collects when it reviews agencies is good data to look at to determine where an agency needs work. It includes otherwise ‘sensitive’ data like use of force, biased based policing, personnel activities, complaints and Internal Affairs. Datasets that are also listed as important data sets in the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Criticism

Self-inspection and self-evaluation happens within departments constantly which is why it’s a good thing that a third party has the ability to evaluate agencies from the outside. The reports created by a CALEA review are available if the police department decides to publish them publicly. Check out Frederick (MD) CALEA report here.

However, this does bring us to our one criticism of CALEA - there doesn’t appear to be enough input or evaluation from a non-law enforcement related sources. 

All four agencies who founded CALEA are law enforcement organizations. Of the 21 commissioners that make up the CALEA board, only two members have somewhat of a non law enforcement background (a judge and a criminal justice professor).

Does this ‘law enforcement only’ background help circulate bad and outdated policies and stifle innovation that an outside source would bring to the table? Or does it ensure that the right and proven standards, policies and procedures are upheld? We’re not entirely sure. 

But we do agree that with over 18,000 police agencies nationwide all run at a local level it’s promising to have a nationwide system in place where agencies aim to meet similar standards that other agencies of similar size are attaining.

So, does your local police agency have any accreditations? Are they CALEA accredited? Let us know!