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Full-time Law Enforcement Employees, by Region and Geographic Division by Population Group, Number and Rate per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2016

The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

General comments

• This table provides the number and rate per 1,000 inhabitants of law enforcement employees broken down by region, geographic division, and population group.

• The totals for full-time law enforcement employees in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan county agencies are combined in this table. 

• Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. 

• Suburban areas exclude all metropolitan agencies associated with a principal city. The agencies associated with suburban areas also appear in other groups within this table. 

Methodology

• The information in this table is derived from law enforcement employee counts (as of October 31, 2016) submitted by participating agencies. 

• The UCR Program defines law enforcement officers as individuals who ordinarily carry a firearm and a badge, have full arrest powers, and are paid from governmental funds set aside specifically to pay sworn law enforcement. 

• Civilian employees include full-time agency personnel such as clerks, radio dispatchers, meter attendants, stenographers, jailers, correctional officers, and mechanics. 

• The FBI derived the rate of full-time law enforcement employees per population group by first dividing the aggregated total of personnel for the group by the aggregated estimated populations covered by the contributing agencies within the group and then multiplying the resulting figure by 1,000. 

Regions and geographic divisions

The U.S. Census Bureau established the four regions of the United States along with their nine geographic divisions that are used by the UCR Program to compile the nation’s crime data. The following table lists the 50 states and the District of Columbia arranged according to the regions and geographic divisions of the United States.

NORTHEASTERN STATES

New England
Connecticut
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Vermont

Middle Atlantic
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania

MIDWESTERN STATES

East North Central
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan
Ohio
Wisconsin

West North Central
Iowa
Kansas
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota

SOUTHERN STATES

South Atlantic
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Maryland
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia

East South Central
Alabama
Kentucky
Mississippi
Tennessee

West South Central
Arkansas
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Texas

WESTERN STATES

Mountain
Arizona
Colorado
Idaho
Montana
Nevada
New Mexico
Utah
Wyoming

Pacific
Alaska
California
Hawaii
Oregon
Washington

Population groups

The UCR Program uses the following population group designations:

Population Group	Political Label	Population Range
I	City	250,000 and more
II	City	100,000 to 249,999
III	City	50,000 to 99,999
IV	City	25,000 to 49,999
V	City	10,000 to 24,999
VI1,2	City	Less than 10,000
VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2	County	N/A
IX (Metropolitan County)2	County	N/A

¹Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.

²Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

Population estimation

For the 2016 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2010 decennial population counts and 2011 through 2015 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2015 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2016 population estimate.