Abstract: Determining an employee's salary range is a challenge for many managers in the Criminal Justice field. Employees in this field take on great responsibilities and deserve to be compensated accordingly. However, many agencies have tight budgets and are forced to get the most value from their allocated funds. The following study may be used to assist managers in establishing salary ranges for Property and Evidence Technicians. This study is based on a survey that appeared in The Evidence Log.

In the spring of 2003, a survey, entitled Property and Evidence Survey, was placed in The Evidence Log, a periodical sent quarterly to Police Stations, Sheriff's Departments and Crime labs across the county. Out of the twenty-five hundred people that receive the journal, forty-three people responded to the survey over a four-month period of time.

The survey consisted of thirteen areas of questions including the respondent's location, job title, salary, employee classification, and job responsibilities. In the following study we break down these factors to help better gauge the proper compensation for your Property and Evidence Technicians.

The results of the survey showed that the salary of all respondents ranged from $10.00 to $39.14 per hour. The average salary was found to be $19.04 and the median salary was found to be $18.38. The salary ranges were broken down into $5 increments so they could be put into the following graph (see Figure 1). A majority of the respondents earned salaries in the $10-15 range followed closely by the $16-20 range.

When we factor out the top 25 percent and the bottom 25 percent, as is common practice when looking at salary ranges, we get a range of $13.58 to $25.08 per hour. The average salary is $18.61 and the median salary was found to be $18.75 (see Figure 2).

Employee Classification

The survey asked whether the respondent was a civilian or sworn employee. A sworn employee will generally earn a higher salary than a civilian employee. The chart below (see Figure 3) shows that 76% of the employees were civilian workers and 22% were sworn. Only 2% described themselves as "Other". Sworn employees earn $24.61 per hour compared to $17.83 per hour earned by civilian employees. The sworn employees on average earned close to $7.00 more per hour. Employee classification tends to be one of the biggest factors determining salary ranges.

Location

Another important factor in determining the pay rate of an employee is the location of the agency. Each state was put into one of the following geographic regions, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, and West. The cost of living and quality of life across the United States is very different depending on region. It is extremely important to look at salary in relation to region. Some states have higher taxes or housing costs, so salaries will need to be adjusted to compensate.

The government has evaluated the cost of living and assigned a Cost of Living Index number for each state. The average Cost of Living Index for the United States is 100. States above 100 have a higher cost of Jiving and states below have a lower cost of living than the national average. Represented in the chart shown below (see Figure 4) is the average cost of living for each region.

Look at the cost of living, and then look at salary per region to determine if your facility is accounting for a higher or lower cost of living. The graph below (see Figure 5) shows the average salary by the geographic region. The Northeast has the highest cost of Jiving and its wages reflect that. The South, which has the lowest cost of living, has the lowest salaries.

Figure 5:

The table (Figure 6) combines many of the factors we have explored in this study. To generate these figures all salaries were adjusted to represent a Cost of Living Index ofl 00, the national average. These figures were then sorted into two groups, civilian employees and sworn employees. The top 25th percentile and bottom 25th percentile were factored out and the numbers were readjusted to represent the Cost of Living Index for each region. The Northeast has the highest average salary and the highest salary range in both the civilian and sworn categories. In each region we see that the sworn salaries are considerable higher than the civilian salaries.

Ranking of the Evidence Facilities

The facilities were given a ranking ofl-6 based on the answers from the 3 I property and evidence related questions dealing with specific job responsibilities that the respondents perform. The ranking was calculated by tallying the number of "YES" answers on each survey. This number was then grouped based on increments of five. Facilities with a ranking of 4 had employees who answered "YES" to the fewest number ofj ob responsibilities while facilities that received a I had employees who responded "YES" to the most number of questions.

Logically, we would think that positions with higher rankings would earn greater salaries. However, in this survey there did not seem to be any correlation between the number of evidence-related duties and salaries (see Figure 7). This could be due to a number of factors, including other responsibilities that were not included in this survey and the small number of respondents that fell into the top ranking. Only 6% of those responding to the survey scored in the highest ranking (see Figure 8).

The last factor for determining the salary of an employee that we will look at is the number of years the employee has been with the agency. Generally, the more years an employee has been with the agency the greater the salary will be (see Figure 9 on page 35). The employees that have been with the agency for over 11 years have the highest salary . We see that employees who are just starting out with the agency earn the least amount, as would be expected.

The task of setting a salary can be very challenging. Many factors can influence the pay rate of an employee and all these factors must be examined carefully when determining pay scales. The tools provided in this study should assist you in determining proper compensation for your Evidence and Property Technicians.