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The guidance provided here is to assist Wikipedia editors to properly and consistently categorise articles about law enforcement agencies and law enforcement units. This guidance applies to articles about the law enforcement agency or unit. It is not, for example, directly applicable things related to the law enforcement agency, or law enforcement generally.

Failure to meet these guidelines is criteria for either speedy renaming, or possibly even speedy deletion, as per Categories for discussion.

This guideline is a tailored version of Naming conventions (categories) and Categorisation applied to law enforcement agencies, and should be read in conjunction with those two guidelines.

The top level category for law enforcement agencies is Law enforcement agencies

Note: Throughout the rest of this guideline, the term law enforcement agency means law enforcement agency or law enforcement unit (of an agency).

Characteristics for categorisation

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The characteristics of a law enforcement agency or unit used to determine which categories it should be placed in are:

Organisational status

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Fictional law enforcement agencies are described in Fictional law enforcement agency and have a parent category Fictional law enforcement agencies.
Defunct law enforcement agencies are described in Defunct law enforcement agency and have a parent category Defunct law enforcement agencies.
Non-government law enforcement agencies are described in Non-government law enforcement agency and have a parent category Non-government law enforcement agencies.

Jurisdiction

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International law enforcement agencies are described in International law enforcement agency and have a parent category International law enforcement agencies.
National law enforcement agencies are described in National law enforcement agency and have a parent category National law enforcement agencies.
Federal law enforcement agencies are described in Federal law enforcement agency and have a parent category Federal law enforcement agencies.
Law enforcement agencies of a country are generally described in an article for each country named Law enforcement in country, and have a category Law enforcement agencies of country, which has a parent category Law enforcement agencies by country.
Law enforcement agencies of a division of a country have a parent category Law enforcement agencies of country division name.
Law enforcement agencies of a sub division of a country have a parent category Law enforcement agencies of country sub division name.

Social impact

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Police agencies are described in Police and due to their wide range of characteristics have no single parent category, other than the top category Law enforcement agencies.
Secret police agencies are described in Secret police and have a parent category Secret police.

Speciality

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specialist lea types

Specialist law enforcement agencies are described in Specialist law enforcement agency and have a parent category Specialist law enforcement agencies.

Secularity

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Religious law enforcement agencies are described in Religious police and have a parent category Religious law enforcement agencies.

Military or civilian

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Makeup

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Definitions of characteristics

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Definitions of some of these characteristics:

can be found in Law enforcement agency.

World view common category structure and naming

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There is a common top level categorisation structure for law enforcement agencies world wide. The standard name for the organisation within the world view standard is law enforcement agency.

The standardised top level structure is as follows:

At levels lower than the world view standard, the structure diverges for country specific contexts, if required. Also, country specific structures can be added into the lower levels of the world view standard.

Also, country specific lower level category structures may use country specific terms for the organisation.

Country specific structures below the common world view level

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While the common world view can be directly applied to most countries' law enforcement agencies, some countries have very specific and-or diverse law enforcement structures. In such cases there are standards for these countries for the lower levels of categorisation of law enforcement agencies.

United States

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The United States has one of the most fractured law enforcement agency regimes of all countries, and as a result has by far the greatest number of law enforcement agencies (the vast majority of them having small jurisdictions and small numbers of personnel). To accommodate the categorisation of a very large number of agencies and types of agency, lower levels of categorisation are needed than are needed for most other countries.

The sub categorisation of law enforcement agencies for the United States overlaps with the lower levels of the world view standard.

The standard for the United States is:

United Kingdom

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The United Kingdom is a collation of countries and crown protectorates. The organisation and naming of law enforcement agencies has been influenced by this and is not typical of most other countries.

The standard for the United Kingdom is:

See also

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Guidelines

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Discussions

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Category