ABSTRACT
Since the 1960s, hundreds of U.S. police agencies have established Law Enforcement Explorer Posts. Today, “over 33,000 Explorers and 8,425 adult volunteers participate in Law Enforcement Exploring. The program highlights include: the National Law Enforcement Exploring Leadership Academies, ride-alongs, career achievement awards, National Law Enforcement Exploring Conferences, and scholarship opportunities” (Exploring 2014). The prototypes for this well-known contemporary youth program were established during the first quarter of the twentieth century when various units of “junior” or “boy police” as well as school boy safety patrols were sponsored by local police departments, public schools, and private schools. The youth photographed in Figure 8.1 were only playacting and did not belong to any “junior police” program in 1900; rather, they wore police costumes to welcome a visit by Rear Admiral William T. Sampson during a weeklong town celebration. However, when and where actual programs existed, they were highly publicized and deemed to be constructive alternatives to an unstructured street life. Such programs were organized in Chicago, Illinois; Berkeley, California; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Cincinnati, Ohio; and New York City, New York. The members of these early youth organizations received instruction in law enforcement and safety topics, thereby inaugurating the first “youth police academies.” With the adoption of community policing during the last two decades of the twentieth century, programs embracing the earlier spirit of these efforts began to reemerge (LeConte 2012b). According to Pat Fuller, former chief of the Austin Independent School District (ISD) Police Department, “Our biggest problem is that the schools keep pulling our officers off of the campus to teach more classes. The students may not see it, but we do. And so do the schools-the
junior police academy (JPA) works. It supports a healthy and safe school environment, and we will continue to use it” (Fuller 2012).
