Accreditation Of CALEA

Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies or CALEA is an organization composed of four prestigious law enforcement entities. These entities include the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and the Police Executive Research Forum. These four prestigious groups joined together to construct a minimum standards requirement for agencies to abide by, similar to what individual states required of their officers to be certified. CALEA representatives in each organization conducted research and compiled approximately one thousand standards for law enforcement agencies to meet. Although becoming a nationally accredited agency

The handling of prisoners and court-related activities; and,
6. Support functions and technical services.
As some of these standards do not apply to every agency, a mandatory standard and non-mandatory standard, was created. Once evaluated in these categories, the evaluators will submit a final recommendation based off the findings of the 12 to 18 month evaluation process on whether or not the agency should become accredited. (Doerner, 2012)
Like with any accreditation process there are advantages and disadvantages. Some of the advantages I found during my research process are to include, a greater accountability within an agency, by assuring the standards are being met if not exceeded, reducing risk and liability exposure and insurance, providing a stronger defense against civil law suits, staunch support from government officials recognizing an agency’s ability to operate efficiently and meeting the community’s needs, and lastly, an increase in community advocacy.

I am a law enforcement professional who is housed at an advocacy center in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The advocacy center where my office is housed out of has gone through the accreditation process to become nationally recognized. For the advocacy center, the accreditation has been very beneficial for us. Through the accreditation we are able to help more children and have more federal funding available to us. However, on the flip side of this argument. For law enforcement agencies large and small, based off the cost charts posted on the CALEA.org website, I can understand where becoming accredited may be too costly and time consuming to maintain the proper documentation. As I listed above there are advantages and disadvantages to this accreditation process. I believe the accreditation is not for every department and must be evaluated at an individual agency’s basis. As for my police department, we are not accredited, but I could see where the advantage of having a stronger defense in civil suits would benefits my