Soft Skills for Criminal Justice Professionals: Their Importance

By Dr. Michael Pittaro  |  05/31/2024

The criminal justice sector provides extensive pre-employment and ongoing training to law enforcement and corrections officers. Various training academies as well as in-house “on-the-job” training programs prepare criminal justice professionals for the duties and responsibilities of the profession.

The focus of training is often on what we refer to as “hard skills,” which are quantifiable, measurable, and task-specific skills needed to perform the basic responsibilities of the job. For example, defensive tactics, critical incident response techniques, and threat analysis are considered hard skills.

They require specific knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that can be measured through a multitude of quantifiable assessments. Employers within the criminal justice sector place a heavy emphasis on hard skills and rightfully so.

However, “soft skills,” such as interpersonal communication skills, are of equal importance. Soft skills encompass personal characteristics and traits.

They are the intangible skills, which are challenging to quantify and measure, but something that criminal justice employers, myself included, seek out in candidates. Unfortunately, soft skills are largely lacking and overlooked within the criminal justice profession, particularly within law enforcement and corrections.

Soft Skills Deserve Consideration

In addition to teaching, I also assist students in obtaining internships and job placements within the criminal justice sector. Criminal justice employers, particularly those in law enforcement and corrections, have expressed concern that so-called soft skills are underemphasized, since we appear to have shifted away from the important role that they serve in our profession. For example, officers need soft skills to help them communicate effectively and de-escalate situations or resolve conflicts.

Most people would agree that we have become a nation fixated on academic assessments in grades K-12 and at the university level. Both students and faculty proudly promote and publish assessment outcomes in newsletters and on social media to highlight academic standing amongst our competitors and attract new students to our respected high schools and universities.

But is academic success a measure of true capability or potential? According to National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) associate editor Kevin Gray, a 2024 NACE job outlook study concluded that today’s employers have realized the importance of prioritizing a job applicant’s interpersonal skills over their high school/college grade point average (GPA) or academic standing amongst their peers.

In the same survey, nearly 90% of responding employers indicated they are seeking evidence of a student’s ability to solve problems, and nearly 80% of those surveyed are seeking candidates who have strong teamwork skills.  In addition, approximately two-thirds of responding employers are looking for evidence of a strong work ethic, interpersonal communication skills, analytical skills/problem-solving skills, flexibility/adaptability, and technical skills.

My comments are not intended, by any means, to discount or dismiss the importance of one’s academic standing or cumulative GPA, but rather to place just as much emphasis on the importance of a candidate’s soft skills. Unfortunately, these soft skills are rarely woven into the K-12, college/university, or training academy curricula.

Nevertheless, people skills such as good oral and written communication are vital in criminal justice. As criminal justice professionals, we work closely with members of the community, crime victims, eyewitnesses, suspects, convicted offenders, judges, lawyers, and so on.

Soft Skills for Criminal Justice Professionals

According to a 2023 editorial by PoliceOfficer.org, criminal justice careers, particularly jobs in law enforcement and corrections, demand that you interact with a diverse, varied group of people at any given time.

In some of those encounters, tensions may be high and the potential for the situation to quickly escalate is a reality of the job. The best way to resolve potentially dangerous use-of-force situations is to rely on your cognitive and emotional intelligence skills.

Resolving a dangerous situation does not always involve the hard skills acquired through professional training. You also need to develop soft skills to be truly effective in your day-to-day life as a police or corrections officer.

Law enforcement agencies can help employees to develop their soft skills through various methods, such as coaching, mentoring, and creating diversified training programs. They can also strengthen their employees’ critical thinking skills and cultivate an innovative culture.

Some of the best skills that police officers can develop include:

• Empathy – The ability to not only understand someone else’s feelings but also to share those feelings, which allows for a deeper appreciation of what others are experiencing.
• Compassion – Compassion begins where empathy leaves off. If empathy is an understanding and sharing of other’s feelings, then compassion means putting that understanding into action.
• Nonverbal communication – Those cues we send through our tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and enunciation often carry far more weight in how our messages are received than the actual words we use.
• Active listening – In our profession, most situations involve individuals who just want to be heard. Active listening means interpreting and understanding the needs of others in a conversation.
• Adaptability – Anyone who works in law enforcement or corrections will tell you that your day is going to be largely unpredictable. We must be able to anticipate, adapt, and overcome challenges that we are likely to encounter.
• Building a rapport – As previously mentioned, police officers will encounter a number of individuals each day, each with their own wants and needs. We must establish a rapport with these individuals to build a certain level of mutual trust.
• Critical thinking and problem solving – There is no such thing as a routine day when you work in corrections or law enforcement. Officers must be able to quickly and efficiently assess and analyze facts, observations, and information so they can make informed, sound decisions. Critical thinking is essential to solving problems and resolving conflicts.
• Conflict resolution –Because conflict accompanies much of an officer’s job (corrections and law enforcement), he or she must have the ability to resolve that conflict quickly and peacefully.

The criminal justice sector must focus more attention, training, and education on indispensable soft skills. We must also screen for them in interviews.

For example, in some interviews, candidates will be presented with a hypothetical scenario and then asked how they would de-escalate the situation through communication. The ability to control a situation through communication rather than physical force is always preferred.Granted, physical force will be necessary in some situations. But in most situations, the ability to de-escalate the situation by problem-solving and critical thinking are favored.

Soft skills are proving to be the difference between positive and negative encounters, especially when empathy, active listening, and conflict resolution are embraced. Soft skills are not intended to replace or mitigate the value of hard skills, but rather to enhance and improve the quality and performance of our job responsibilities and duties. They provide the balance that we want to see in our criminal justice professionals.

As a university professor, I acknowledge that a student’s academic success depends largely on the student’s understanding of content, especially in core subject area. However, a student’s potential future as a law enforcement or corrections officer also depends on the ability to apply knowledge in an intuitive, thoughtful, and effective way. All criminal justice professionals should consider how soft skills can be further honed and applied on the job.

Criminal Justice Degrees at American Military University

For students who are interested in topics such as criminal justice and criminology, American Military University (AMU) offers several degrees, such as:

• An online associate of arts degree in criminal justice
• An online bachelor of science in criminal justice
• An online bachelor of arts in criminal justice 
• An online master of arts in criminal justice

The courses in these degree programs cover a wide variety of topics, including evidence and procedures, criminal profiling, forensics, intercultural communication, research design and methods, criminal investigation, and criminal law. Through their coursework, students will have the chance to develop both hard skills and soft skills, such as critical thinking and writing. For more information about our degrees and certificates, visit our program page.