When sheriffs and command staff were asked if their agencies remain understaffed at the 2026 National Sheriffs' Association Annual Conference, almost every hand in the room shot up. A new commentary published by the R Street Institute on June 22, 2026, reports that despite recent headlines about hiring surges at big-city departments, the workforce crisis plaguing America's small and rural law enforcement agencies is far from over. For the sheriffs running these agencies, the challenge of doing more with fewer people remains the top concern.

The numbers paint a stark picture. In 2023, resignations had climbed 47 percent above their pre-pandemic levels, significantly outpacing retirements as the main source of staff losses. By 2024, roughly 70 percent of agencies reported that recruiting was harder than it had been five years earlier. Today, agencies operate at roughly 91 percent of authorized staffing on average, with two-thirds curtailing services like traffic enforcement, community policing, and even investigations just to keep core patrol covered. Nearly half of all local police departments employ fewer than 10 full-time officers, meaning that when positions sit vacant, the work doesn't disappear—it piles onto everyone else. The result is mandatory overtime, longer shifts, and chronic fatigue that drive the next round of resignations.

According to the report's authors, Jillian Snider and Logan Seacrest, the temptation to lower hiring standards as a shortcut "only trades a short-term vacancy for long-term liability and broken public trust." They cite the 2024 killing of Sonya Massey by Deputy Sean Grayson—a man who had bounced through six Illinois law enforcement agencies in four years—as a tragic example of what happens when standards slip. The report finds that officers with less education are less effective at de-escalation and more likely to use deadly force, while those with subpar fitness levels are more prone to injury. Sheriff Darren Campbell of Iredell County, North Carolina, is quoted in the commentary: "I'd rather have a vacancy than a liability."

The report argues that the workforce crisis won't be solved by hiring alone—it requires smart policy that lets a stretched workforce focus on crime. Four priorities emerged from the conference. First, retention is more cost-effective than recruitment, so states and counties should rethink pension structures that drive early exits and invest in mental-health check-ups and employee-assistance programs that officers actually trust. Second, deflection programs—which redirect low-level, behavioral-health-driven cases toward treatment instead of arrest—are already active in roughly 850 sites nationwide and free up officer time for serious crime. Third, reentry programs can break the recidivism cycle, since about two-thirds of those released from state prison are rearrested within three years. The report notes that dismantling the 40,000-plus regulatory and licensing barriers that block people with records from work and housing, and automating clean-slate record sealing, would help cut repeat calls for service. Fourth, the report warns that technology like AI-powered report-writing systems and real-time crime centers is arriving faster than the rules to govern it, and that clear policies keeping "a human in the loop" are necessary to protect civil liberties and shield agencies from privacy and bias pitfalls.

The commentary emphasizes that these workforce pressures hit hardest in rural and mid-size jurisdictions—exactly the agencies with the thinnest margins and smallest applicant pools. A big-city department can redeploy assets in ways that a sheriff with just a handful of deputies covering hundreds of square miles cannot. The authors conclude that what stood out at the conference was not resistance to change but hunger for it: "Sheriffs are pragmatists. They want approaches that reduce repeat calls, conserve personnel, and hold up in court." The workforce crisis won't be fixed by any single hire, grant, or gadget—it will be solved by policies that let officers focus on crime. Sheriffs are ready, the report says. Now policymakers need to catch up.