The Challenges of Recruitment: A Crisis of Professionalising Law Enforcement Agencies

Abstract

Law enforcement agencies across the globe are struggling to recruit and hire police officers who are skilled, professional and have high discipline. Even in South Africa there is no exception, incompetent individuals without qualifications relevant to law enforcement are recruited. This study attempts to evaluate the challenges of recruitment and the crisis of professionalism in the law enforcement agencies. This qualitative article adopted the non-empirical research design: Systematic review. This study is completely based on the secondary data. A systematic review was done in detail for the collected literature. The key findings indicated that the current recruitment system is not effective and functioning properly as it allows for corrupt police officers, the recruitment system allowed everyone to qualify even when they do not have relevant qualifications. The findings further indicated that recruitment was done for job creation and it was not professionalised which led to nepotism and political interference. Based on the findings, the author provided, possible recommendations such as: the development of the new recruitment system which will endorse education and specialised skills in the service, adopt new policies and recruitment systems from developed countries such as UK, USA, and Australia.