The quality control of community caretakers: a study of mental health screening in a sheriff's department.

There is increasing awareness of the sensitive and crucial role of the law enforcement officer as a community caretaker. Rigorous efforts to define criteria of adequate performance and to select men who can meet these criteria are called for. In this study applicants for a law enforcement agency were subjected to an extensive psychological test battery and a psychiatric interview. The results were matched against subsequent performance as law enforcement officers. The data show that although some psychological factors are related to failure on the job, intellectual factors are the best predictors of advancement in the department, and the psychiatric interview did not relate to any of the performance criteria. Development of performance criteria was a problem here as elsewhere.