Now we come to what an LEA jurisdiction is. LEAs are said to be operated within a jurisdiction when their application of powers is restricted in some way.
LEAs have geographical restrictions in applying power. Some LEAs have the ability to apply their power within a country like the United States of America's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, within a part of a country such as the Australian state Queensland Police, or across a group of countries like the Interpol and the Europol. These LEAs assist in law enforcement activities only. They do not indulge directly in law enforcement. They facilitate the sharing of information with the LEAs of that particular country and moreover, the Europol lacks any executive powers.
Often the complexity and seriousness of the problem determines the jurisdiction of an LEA. For example in the United States of America cross boundary kidnapping cases are given to the FBI. Along with this, jurisdiction based on consensus can coexist in a country.
A local police or a territorial police is an LEA, which has a wide range of powers but the execution ability is restricted geographically. LEAs can have a jurisdiction based on the type of laws they enforce. For example, Interpol has no powers in racial, political, military, and religious matters. For a division within a country the LEA jurisdiction can be multi-leveled. For example the United States has multiple levels law enforcement such as Federal, Tribal, State, County, Town, Village, and others.
The responsibilities of a federal LEA typically include the protection of the federation against frauds, border control, immigration, investigating currency counterfeiting, national security, and protection of designated VIPs. Usually a federal LEA has main responsibilities of protecting the laws which affect the federation as a whole. Generally federal LEAs have less police responsibilities. The divisions within a federation have their own police agencies. But in some countries federal agencies have jurisdiction in the divisions also. In a country where the divisions are not capable of drafting their own laws national law enforcement agency is constituted. A national LEA covers both police responsibilities of social order as well as national law enforcement responsibilities.
There are certain LEAs which are responsible for enforcing religious law, for example Sharia or Halakha and Saudi Arabia's Mutaween. Military organizations also have law enforcement cells. These units are generally known as military police. Other responsibilities of an LEA include the policing of social order. This includes combating anti social behavior and public incident mediation. The policing also includes public safety. This covers areas such as general search and rescue and crowd control. The other responsibilities are regulation, disaster victim identification, education, and awareness campaigns.
Apart from the law enforcement responsibilities many LEAs have service and administrative responsibilities. The job prospects of law enforcement can now be discussed. There are 2,800,000 employees in the federal LEA, of which nearly 50% are close to retirement. Currently there are about 44,000 job vacancies. Aspiring candidates can enter agencies like FBI, GSA, and Department of the Treasury, Justice, Secret Service, Agriculture, Transportation, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The different fields are the Border and Transportation Security, Border and Transportation Security, Information Analysis, and Infrastructure Protection, Science and Technology, and Management. There are many sub-fields associated with these fields. An online criminal justice degree proves to be helpful in getting a job with the federal agency.
The median annual pay of criminal investigators was $55,522. The lowest 10% got around $33,490 and the highest 10% earned more than $86,810. In the federal government median annual pay was $71,820; it was $51,516 in local government. The federal employees who serve in law enforcement are provided with special salary rates. The federal special agents and inspectors are expected to work a large amount of overtime. So they get an additional Law Enforcement availability pay.
Many of the Law Enforcement jobs have an age limitation. The applicant should be at least 21 years of age and below the age of 37 at the time of recruitment. In all it can be said that the Law Enforcement jobs are really exciting and enthralling jobs, but one should keep in mind the responsibilities associated with this job.
