Screening for insider threats in US law enforcement: A national sample of department policies and practices state of practice guide

Erin Kearns , Sadaf Hashimi , Jessica Huff , Justin Nix , Natalie Cotton

Police , Insider threats
July 2024

Table of Contents

Research on insider threats in U.S. Law Enforcement

Project Overview

For decades, violent extremist groups in the U.S. have encouraged their members to infiltrate law enforcement agencies. While there are anecdotal examples of insider threats in law enforcement, we do not have a systematic understanding of whether these are isolated incidents or indicative of a more pervasive issue. To address this gap, the current project took a multi-method approach to examining department-level policies and procedures around screening and hiring.

The State of Practice Report is the major deliverable from this grant focused on multi-pronged formative research on insider threats in U.S. law enforcement. Broadly, we were interested in the extent to which law enforcement agencies around the country are concerned with potential insider threats in their departments. Our main objective was to better understand current policies and procedures to screen for and identify insider threats in the law enforcement hiring process and among active officers. This report outlines the state of practice, notes where there is variation and where there is similarity by agency type, size, location, and other demographics, and compares policy to practice.

To complement the findings of the State of Practice Report, we have also created two complementary documents: (1) a Self-Assessment Guide for agencies to use to evaluate how their practices align with promising practices from the broader field and (2) a Plain Language Summary of this report’s findings.

Our main objective was to better understand current policies and procedures to screen for and identify insider threats in the hiring process and among active officers.