Sheriffs' Offices, 2016: Personnel

• NCJ Number: 252834
• Date Published: October 2019
• Author(s): Connor Brooks
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Series: BJS Bulletins
• Agencies: BJS
• Publication Type: Statistics; Report (Technical Assistance); Report (Annual/Periodic)

Annotation

This report presents statistics on full-time employees in U.S. sheriffs' offices for the period 1997-2016 and compares them with full-time sworn officers in general-purpose law enforcement agencies.

Abstract

This report is the 10th in a series that began in 1986. It provides personnel information on the approximately 3,000 sheriffs' offices in the United States. It describes the number of sworn and civilian staff, demographic characteristics of sworn officers, and personnel assigned to specialized functions.

• Sheriffs' offices employed about 173,000 full-time sworn officers in 2016.
• About 52% (roughly 186,000 out of 360,000) of all full-time staff in sheriffs' offices were limited-sworn or civilian employees.
• The number of full-time limited-sworn or civilian employees in sheriffs' offices increased 20% from 2003 to 2016, while the number of full-time sworn officers was about the same in both years.
• More than half (55%) of sheriffs' offices employed less than 25 full-time sworn officers.
• About 4% of sheriffs' offices had the equivalent of 250 or more full-time sworn officers in 2016, and those offices employed about half (47%) of all full-time sworn sheriffs' officers nationwide.
• About 1 in 7 sheriffs' officers, and about 1 in 8 first-line supervisors, were female.