A Look At Campus Safety

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

A Look at Campus Safety, Security, And Accreditation

Ian Scofield

Department of Criminal Justice | Seattle University | 901 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122

Campus Public Safety: A Look at Campus Safety, Security, and Accreditation

Abstract

Accreditation in law enforcement is currently a hot topic. No one has come up with a solid definition of what law enforcement professionalism should look like, so it important to create at least a universal appearance among agencies. Benefits among agencies accredited appear to outweigh the costs

of getting accredited. Preparing to get accredited and getting accredited is a long and costly process made harder by the availability of accreditation material. Accreditation should be about the agency becoming professional and not about a third party making money. What does accreditation do though?

Recently Seattle University’s Director of Public Safety (SUPS or the Department) was asked to step down. One of the reasons given to the public was the lack of professional accountability in the department. Over the last five years the Department has had no policy and procedures manual and has since lost its accreditation. SUPS used to be accredited by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) but without a manual and missing reaccreditation lead to revocation of said accreditation. To rectify this situation SUPS Interim Director Randy Carroll is creating a new manual to the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement standards Agencies, Inc. (CALEA). This paper and the attached project shall examine the accreditation of law enforcement, its ease and benefits, and compare it to current research.

With all the recent incidents in the United States regarding schools is important to take a step back and look at school safety and security. Virginia Tech, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and incidents such as those may seem far away now but think of what has happened recently; The Central Technical School shooting of 2010, The Lone Star College shooting of 2013, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012, the Oikos University shooting of 2012, and others like those. All of these incidents happened within the last year and a half.

Part of The cost of this could be due to reduce funding for University Department of Public Safety or University Police Departments or University Security Agencies. Over the last five years the Seattle University Department of Public Safety has been operating on little to no funding increase. With no new money it makes it hard for the department to expand to the ever increasing needs of the University. For fiscal year 2013 Seattle University has asked all departments to cut 5% or more from their budget; however, after certain incidents, practices, and activities were brought to light of Student Development, the Director Public Safety was removed from his position. When this decision was made a consulting firm was brought in along with the new, Interim Director of Public Safety. Now the department has an increased budget from which to operate. This budget is being used to create a standards manual and repair, replace, or fix equipment and uniforms that are currently being used and are broken or outdated. This is just an example of one University that has problems.

CALEA

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies is a group of law enforcement officials from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, National Sheriff’s Association, and the Police Executive Research Forum.(IACLEA, 2010b) The reason behind creating such a commission of professionals is to develop standards by which Law Enforcement Agencies can be held to. CALEA has six primary goals:

Strengthen crime prevention and control capabilities.

Formalize essential management procedures.

Establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices.

Improve service delivery.

Solidify interagency cooperation and coordination.

Increase community and staff confidence in the agency.

CALEA currently has over 1,600 accredited (or in the process of being accredited) Public Safety agencies.(Burlingame & Baro, 2005) These agencies include, law enforcement agencies (police, sheriffs, public safety, etc.), dispatching agencies, training academies, and campus security/public safety agencies. These agencies are spread throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Barbados, the Virgin Islands, the United Kingdom, Haiti, Scotland, and Qatar (CALEA, 2010a). Fifteen agencies from Washington State are currently in the self-assessment process of becoming accredited or are already accredited. Only four non-commissioned law enforcement agencies in the United States are accredited (or seeking accreditation) by CALEA. This could be due to the age of CALEA’s non-sworn college/university program, the first agency to be accredited was Anne Arundel Community College’s Department of Public Safety on November 4, 2012 (Smith, 2012). The other three agencies mentioned above are still in the process of being accredited. While they provide this information on their website there is no count specifically of the agencies involved in their accreditation process.

Not every agency in the 1,600 agency count is accredited to the same level. An old accreditation process known as recognition is still available to those agencies still recognized. The recognition as opposed to accreditation has less standards that must be met.

IACLEA

The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators is an accreditation commission directed specifically towards college campuses. Created by 11 college and university directors, IACLEA serves much the same purposes as CALEA. They serve to provide educational resources, advocacy, and professional development to campus law enforcement agencies.(IACLEA, 2011a) Currently IACLEA has over 2,000 individual memberships and over 1,200 colleges and universities in 20 countries. However, it only has 36 accredited agencies (IACLEA, 2011d).

Over 1,000 institutional members from campus law enforcement agencies around the world came together to create IACLEA’s more than 226 standards (Lipka, 2008). With multiple different agencies from around the world the standards are backed by years of use and agreement between many people.

On their website IACLEA provides estimates on how much it will cost to become accredited along with a breakdown of the costs (IACLEA, 2011b). For Seattle University to become registered and accredited it would cost $4,650. First, a $150 application fee. Second, a $3,000 fee for first year of accreditation charged to institutions with under 10,000 full-time equivalent students. And lastly a $1,500 fee for not being a member of IACLEA’s membership program. Every year after the first will cost $4,000, a monthly $2,500 fee for reaccreditation and the $1,500 fee for not being a member.

Literature review

Much research has gone into the study of policing and security on college campuses. This research goes covers many different topics from violence on and off campus to accreditation of campus security agencies. Reading and reviewing information and data from studies about college safety and security that help us plan and prevent incidents and disasters on or near campus.

Accreditation of law enforcement and security agencies is a hot topic right now. While accredited law enforcement agencies show better statistics(Burlingame & Baro, 2005; McCabe & Fajardo, 2001) it has been questioned as to whether or not accreditation standards take into account new policing strategies and theories such as community oriented policing (Carter & Sapp, 1994). In the same article though the authors state that police and safety administrators are in favor of accreditation so while it may be a hot topic it is not one that is unwanted.

Another researcher performed a studied at a mid-sized Texas university, West Texas A&M, on the campus community’s feelings towards their security/police department (Griffith, Hueston, Wilson, Moyers, & Hart, 2004). It noted that the department’s satisfaction was quite high, implying that the department is good at incorporating community oriented policing. The author does caution against using this research to generalize among any other campus law enforcement agency; the study was done at one university only, there is limited diversity among the community, and the community is very "close knit."

Accreditation has positive effects on the departments that undergo the process(Burlingame & Baro, 2005; McCabe & Fajardo, 2001). One of these benefits is less legal liability (IACLEA, 2007). By having an accredited manual you are operating a set list of standards that has been agreed upon by multiple law enforcement agencies and is typically backed by research. This benefits both the employee and the employer. The employer is protected whether the employee is working within the scopes of accreditation or outside of them (as long as the employer did not order him to go outside them). If a claim comes up said employer would just have to show that they were following industry approved methods. In the same way the employee can say when questioned that they were operating with in industry standards given to them by their employer. IACLEA also references CALEA research that provides evidence that this is not just hypothetically. Four different agencies that specialized in risk assessment took a look at agencies that were both accredited and not accredited and which ones were more liable when attacked legally. The accredited agencies had better scores.

From the author’s personal experience accreditation also would help with the issue of knowing what you can and cannot do. In the past SUPS has been without a manual and it has made it hard for both the student training officers and new student trainees. The full-time officers at least were provided with a binder with critical information in it. Student staff (now auxiliary staff) rely on what they were trained to do by another student staff member who relies on what they were trained to do by another student staff members and so on. Without the accountability of having the manual people can forget what they were trained and have no way to look it up or be doing something that is against the invisible (not written down anywhere) policy. It also allows the people in charge to constantly change policy which gets hard to keep up with.

A potential downside for employers exists though. Legal policy does not clearly dictate whether an employee handbook (even those in law enforcement) is a contract of employment or not (Moore & Del Carmen, 1994). Most employees are what is considered at-will employed. That means the employer can fire them at any time without reason. If not careful the manual can be deemed a contract and it becomes a lot harder to fire an employee, sometimes even bad employees. It is also harder to lay someone off in a recession if they are on contract, especially a contract that was not intended. This is purely an employer concern and can be helped by putting a simple disclaimer in the beginning of the manual stating that this is not a contract of employment.

Violence has recently been an issue on college campuses, take for instance the list provided in the introduction to this paper. Those incidents are rare but they receive all of the media attention. College campus experience all of the normal violent crime too. They experience rape, homicide, assaults, burglaries, robberies, and more. Incidents such as these have far reaching implications.(Baker & Boland, 2011) They hinder the learning experience. Not only do these crimes effect the victims but they effect the friends and relatives of the victims and the campus as a whole.

Every time a major incident happens the whole campus community feels more at risk. After the Virginia Tech shooting 331 institutions were surveyed and it was found that 9 out of 10 made changes to their safety and/or security procedures.(Rasmussen & Johnson, 2008) While improvements to safety and security are good things, changes are often not even proposed until after a major incident. If they are proposed funding is hard to come by until an incident happens.

There has been a trend on college campuses recently in the amount of people asking for full service law enforcement agencies (Bromley & Reaves, 1998). More and more campus communities are demanding full service law enforcement. University Officials at Seattle University do not want the Department of Public Safety to resemble a military (or paramilitary) organization. While taking this in mind the manual attempts to standardize SUPS with best practices but also to come as close to being a full-service agency as it can without being a sworn department. It should also aim to make the Department more competitive since full-service police departments on college campuses make more money, are more highly educated, and are more diverse than their city counter parts, according to Bromely and Reaves.

CALEA or IACLEA

CALEA, being created in 1979(CALEA, 2010b), is 21 years younger than IACLEA(19585) but has 1,563 more accredited agencies. This could be because CALEA was originally founded as an accreditation commission while IACLEA was originally only a membership agency for campus law enforcement. It wasn’t until 2007 that IACLEA started issuing accreditation (Lipka, 2008).

IACLEA is based upon the standards of CALEA (IACLEA, 2011c; UChannel, 2010). And expands on someone of the more important areas for campuses. Being the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators also means that IACLEA was built specifically for college law enforcement agencies by law enforcement agencies.

The Manual

To add to the study of University Public Safety accreditation the researcher has decided to create a manual to the standards of one of the two main accrediting agencies, IACLEA. Why IACLEA? Currently CALEA charges over $100 to obtain a single copy of their manual. It is highly restricted via pricing to keep their accreditation information more controlled. On the other hand IACLEA provides their standards manual on their website for no cost. IACLEA standards were also built specifically for colleges and are not directly adapted from regular police department policies.

The main purpose of a manual is to standardize the practices of an agency. Accreditation aims to make these practices more or less standardized. Manuals also serve the purpose of ensuring uniformity of personnel and equipment which increases the professional appearance of the agency. These reasons are not the only reasons to create a manual, they also create requirements for agencies such as programs, employee treatment, and the like.

The point of creating a manual for this paper is to analyze the average person’s, experienced in law enforcement, ability to create a manual. This next part of this research will analyze different parts of the manual based on how much information is given by the creation manual on what to write and how to implement it, any academic literature in the area, and whether the subheadings are present in the CALEA Standards. It will also include average times to create each section and comments on wording in the IACLEA manual.

Manuals, studies, and other sources used for the sample manual have been added to the bibliography without being cited in the manual to leave the professional appearance while still keeping accountability.

Chapter One

The IACLEA Standards Manual (IACLEA, 2012) begins with covering agency information in a chapter entitled "Organization and Management." This chapter lays out the basics of what the agency is, how it is managed, and who is in it. In chapter one you can find the mission statement, values, and organizational charts. The chapter itself has two sections and nine subsections.

CALEA’s first chapter is dedicated to "Campus Security Agency Role" and has one section with three subsections (CALEA, 2010c). They cover rights and regulations regarding citizens, code of ethics and training, and agency role in diversion and referral programs. Not once in CALEA’s standards are things like mission statement or values mentioned. More importantly it does not have a description of the department section which allows the viewers of the manual to know the scope of the department.

Some of the areas for Chapter One can be found on the Public Safety website.(Seattle University Department of Public Safety, 2013a, 2013b) On the website a department description and mission statement are easily found. The mission statement under the About Us section the other partially under the About Us section and the homepage (titled Public Safety). The rest of the sections cannot be found on the website and were created from experience, discussion with the interim director, and the overall Seattle University website. This manual and study will focus on the Department of Public Safety and not the Department of Transportation although it may be mentioned several times.

Chapter Two

Chapter two of the IACLEA standards covers Roles and Authority. This chapter covers areas such as the oath of office, code of ethics, legal authority, and some other legal issues regarding services provided by the department. CALEA covers the information found in this chapter in its first chapter. The most important area that IACLEA covers in this area that CALEA doesn’t is the oath of office.

CALEA’s standards outline does not include an oath of office (sworn or affirmed). Having an oath allows employees to know what is expected of them. It is provided in an easy, memorable version for easy recall. Many agencies besides campus law enforcement use oaths: The Civil Air Patrol, every military branch, regular law enforcement agencies, even The Office of the President of The United States of America. The oath taken by the employee is also a solemn promise to the employer and customers that they will carry out their duties. In the case of campus public safety agencies it is a promise to the university and community members of said university that they will protect and serve them to the best of their ability.

It should be noted that because campus public safety officers are typically not sworn officers they do not swear their oath, they affirm it. As such subsection 2.1.1 is being omitted due to the fact Seattle University does not currently nor does it plan to employee any sworn officers.

Most of the information found in this chapter has yet to be provided to even Seattle University Department of Public Safety Officers. What is used to create this chapter comes from job descriptions on the job application and from experience. It also comes from research and using example manuals. For the code of ethics the standard Law Enforcement Code of Ethics developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police was employed. This code of ethics is used by many agencies, including The State University of New York, University of North Carolina Police Department, Riverside Sheriff’s Department, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Port of San Diego Harbor Police, and many more. As a general code of ethics for law enforcement it pretty much catches everything. Most of the departments listed use it unmodified.

A few sections of search as seizure have been left out due to access to University sensitive information and timeliness.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three is entitled Personnel Services and contains three sections and seven subsections. This chapter gives the details about all of the human resources issues that might arise. Description of alternative officer staffing, performance evaluation, promotion, and other such items. Chapter Three in CALEA’s manual is direction. That includes written directives and employee authority. CALEA does not cover personnel services issues until Chapters 12, 19, and 20.

Not only do sections one and two rely heavily on employment law on both the federal and state level but they rely heavily on the University Human Resources Department. Due to this issue most of the subsections under section 3.1 and 3.2 have been omitted. The main exception being setting up shift hours.

For shift hours a standard layout was employed based off of current police schedules at agencies such as Brattleboro Police Department. The next two sections have been created based off of experience in the department and talking with the interim director. It should be noted that part-time officer (3.3.1) had been replaced with perdium officer.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four deals with officer conduct and professionalism and is aptly titled Conduct and Professional Standards. Three sections and sixteen subsections. CALEA files this information under chapters 14 and 15. Like the above chapter (Chapter Three) this chapter deals with human resources issues. When reading the sample manual keep in mind that such issues may not be touched on.

Chapter Five

Chapter five contains the recruitment and selection information which is entitled Recruitment and Selection. CALEA has this chapter as chapter 16 and 17. In this area you can find the information about how the department would go around advertising open positions and then selecting potential officers for those positions.

This chapter also includes some human resources issues. However, unlike the previous chapters, this one is fairly important as the Seattle University Department of Public Safety is currently running on emergency staffing levels for full-time officers. Therefore creating a solid and alluring recruitment method is highly important. Additionally, because the department employs students as auxiliary officers (part-time officer) who graduate within four years of being hired it is important to create an effective recruitment plan to keep employment levels high.

Chapter Six

Entitled Training and Professional Development, the sixth chapter covers all the information regarding training and continuing training. This is where you would go to find the training officers are provided and an officer could find out whether he is eligible to get continuing training. There are three sections with eleven subsections. In CALEA’s manual this can be found in chapter eighteen.

This section is going to be one of the most frequently changed as training for law enforcement officers is constantly changing and being updated. And the sources for this section do and will come from research. But it will also come from practical application of agencies using/testing new training methods and equipment.

Chapter Seven

Use of Force is the topic of Chapter Seven of the IACLEA Standards Manual. Use of Force dictates both what methods of forces are allowed and which are not. It also dictates in what circumstances different types of force are allowed. CALEA gets this chapter out of the way upfront as chapter two. There are two sections and thirteen subsections.

Like the previous chapter this chapter will change quiet often as new force technologies and methodologies are invented or implemented. For this section example manuals and studies were used to create the sample policies.

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight is Detainee Processing and Transportation. This section is very easy for Seattle University’s Public Safety Department. The Department does not include any sworn officers so all detention and transportation of suspects is to be done by sworn law enforcement officials. This prevents miscommunication and eliminates any legal liability with detention and transportation. Based off of CALEA’s Standards Title page they do not have a specific section that outlines detention and processing.

Chapter Nine

Patrol Services is IACLEA’s Chapter Nine. This outlines all of the different services that the patrol division is responsible for and/or provides. CALEA’s Chapter Twenty-One contains all of the Patrol Services information. The layout for this section includes two sections and fifteen subsections.

This section is arguably one of the most important chapters in the manual. It contains the day to day instructions for the officers who are responsible for life safety and security response. Information for this section comes from both samples and studies.

One of two concerning features of accreditation as identified by a study conducted in 1994 was the lack of community oriented policing connections (Carter & Sapp). Recently one of the most popular views on policing has been community oriented policing.(Greene, 2000) Community policing, also known as community oriented policing or problem-oriented policing, is the theory that if you get out of your patrol car, get to know the neighborhood, the people in it, and let them get to know you, that trust in the police will go up and crime rates will go down.

The conflict between accreditation and community oriented policing is that it is hard to work in solution that forces officers to engage in community oriented policing in a college setting. It is hard enough to do in a non-campus setting according to Carter and Sapp (1994). However, it is still easier to implement community policing procedures into law enforcement agencies that are not on a campus. Typically public safety officers walk around while police officers drive. Manuals, such as Brattleboro Police Department’s, have policies that officers must get out of their car and patrol on foot for at least an hour every shift. Similarly certain officers can be assigned to the same sector and become the community police officer for that sector. Most campuses are neither big enough nor well-staffed enough to support such efforts.

Manuals could include a subsection on community policing under this chapter. The proposed subsection would contain a description of community policing and encourage officers to use it. Creation of a community engagement award could help bolster this subsection. An award would ensure officers receive credit for hard work.

Another concern that Carter and Sapp do not mention is that some research has shown that community policing methods utilized by larger police departments do not always transfer over to smaller departments (Weisheit, Wells, & Falcone, 1994). However, in the same article the authors mention that community policing has long been a practice in smaller towns. If this is true, and it would make sense that it is, smaller departments just practice a different form of community policing. Literally being a neighbor to the people you are serving, attending the same events, shopping at the same stores, and eating at the same restaurants are just some features that could be considered community policing in a small town.

The other problem posed by Carter and Sapp is that of managerial issues. This includes funding, time creating a manual, and review and orientation to the manual. The risks of not fixing issues such as equipment and training far outweigh any concerns over money. If an officer does not have the gear and training they need to perform their duties he/she is not only at risk but the people they are protecting are at risk. Employee satisfaction also drops.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten deals with almost everyone’s least favorite portion of policing, the feared parking enforcement. This chapter outlines anything that has to do with motor vehicles from abandoned cars to traffic direction and is made up of three sections. Those sections have a total of fourteen subsections. In the CALEA version of the manual this is chapter twenty-nine and instead of being called Traffic and Parking Services it is simply Traffic. The CALEA version lists six less subsections and mainly focuses on traffic with no mention of parking services.

Most of the same ticketing procedures that up until now were not written down will be used for this section. The one exception is that the department will now have an organizational chart for a parking enforcement division. As an ever expanding campus this is becoming more and more crucial. Over the last four years community members have racked up a total of over $90,000 in unpaid tickets. If the policies regarding parking were being enforced the department would have that much more money.

Additionally currently only one ticketing machine works, and only partially at that. All citations that are given out must be entered into the computer by hand. That means on top of paying someone to go out and ticket someone has to be paid to input data into the computer that would have been put in automatically if the machine worked. Ticketing is a big percentage of any small towns (or agency’s) income.

Chapter Eleven

The next chapter deals with communication and is titled Communication and Dispatch Services. This chapter sets up all of the department standards for communications and covers everything from FCC requirements to alarm systems. The CALEA version of this chapter is found in chapter thirty-one titled simply Communications. This time the IACLEA version only had two sections with seventeen subsections while the CALEA manual has nineteen subsections distributed among three sections.

Communication is a very important part of just about everything we do as humans. It is how we understand what others are going to do and how we let others know what we are going to do. While this is a core section this section is going to rely simply on moving the office of public safety. Writing this chapter about the current officer would breach ethical standards plus the office is expected to be moved within a year. Information for this section comes from studies, best practices, and a knowledge of the new location is like.

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve covers Crime Prevention and Community Involvement. This Chapter has three sections with eight subsections between them. In this chapter you will find information on working with the community, working with the media, and physical security such as locks. CALEA covers this section in chapters twenty-four and twenty-seven.

This would be a great place to put more community police ideas. Activities such as counter drug and anti-crime could be held as campus dinners or games. Any activity which allows the community to get to know the police and vice versa is always good and mixing it with a learning opportunity meant to keep the public safer.

Chapter Thirteen

Investigative Services is the title of thirteenth chapter in the IACLEA Standards Manual. Seventeen subsections are distributed among the three sections. These areas cover all of the tasks that a detective in a regular police department would cover such as investigations, interviewers, availability of detectives. CALEA does not have a completely similar section.

This is a section that needs to be worked out and have some extra emphasis because the role of the detective is pretty crucial. They are the one who consoles the victim, investigates the crime, and more. Currently Seattle University Department of Public Safety only has one investigations officer so while she is on call, it is not convenient to have only one person to rely on. Additionally she has to play the role of all the detectives.

Chapter Fourteen and Fifteen

Both Chapters Fourteen and Fifteen deal with evidence, the first being Collection and Preservation of Evidence and the second being Property and Evidence Control. This can be found under Chapters Thirty-Three and Thirty-Four in the CALEA manual and between the two there are nine subsections and two sections. The IACLEA manual used for this paper contains seven subsections in the fourteenth chapter and seven in the fifteenth chapter. While the author of this paper recognizes the importance of collection and preservation of evidence this section will receive much less focus. The Department of Public Safety has already adapted a new policy regarding evidence and lost and found.

chapter Sixteen

Records and Information Management is the title of Chapter Sixteen. Eighteen subsections and three sections comprise Chapter Sixteen which deals with all of the different aspects of record creation, storage, maintenance, and creation. If one looks for this section in the CALEA Standards Titles for this they can find it under Chapter 32, CALEA calls it Central Records.

This section will receive some attention but is an administrative section so it will take less priority than field services. Field work is the author’s specialty.

Chapter Seventeen

The last chapter in the IACLEA Standards Manual is Critical Incident Management. This section is two sections long with a total of seven subsections. This section deals with all of the emergency situation protocols, including hazardous material response, incident command system training, and emergency notification and testing. The similar sections (chapter 24) in the CALEA manual also deals with special operations and homeland security.

This section is very important as very little has been established in the way of if a critical incident were to happen who would have control and how the Department would work with other agencies. For this portion of the manual personal training, studies, and examples were used.

Implimentation

Implementation of an accreditation manual or any new policy really can be complicated, confusing, and costly. Employees may take some time to remember policies, may not fully understand them right away, or may not like them. There are many things that employers can do to help their employees adapt to change.

The human brain remembers things quicker when new information is mentioned three times in different ways. This allows the brain to remember parts from different methods if not everything from one method. It also allows people who learn different ways to have it explained in ways that may better suit them. Using this logic a manual should be implemented in three different ways. Possible methods: providing a full copy of the manual, video demonstrations of policies that employees can re-watch, and a training session where the manual is reviewed orally.

Employee input is important into the final implementation of a manual. Before a manual is finalized sections that are not specifically required and spelled out by the accreditation agency should be provided to diverse group of employees to review. This enables the employees to feel like they are involved in the process, and they actually are if they are given the opportunity to provide input. A pool of reviewers should be random and include representatives from all portions of the department not just supervisors.

Employees may fear the change of new policies or hate them. Because of this it is important to explain to employees why changes are taking places. Administrators should encourage supervisors to explain to those under them the new policies when they hear negative commentary on them. Negative behavior is contagious (Michelle Neely, 1997) and when built up it can lead to tension between the line level staff and those higher up.

Conclusion

Accreditation appears to serve a purpose. It creates diversity in the work place, standardizes practices, provides employees a reference, and reduces legal liability. Overall accreditation helps security, it incorporates best practices which have been proven to work. The negative aspects found were not enough to cancel out the positive aspects of accreditation.