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A law enforcement agency ( LEA ), in North American English, is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws. Outside North America, such organizations are usually called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police, others are known as sheriff's offices/departments, while investigative police services in the United States are often called bureaus, for example the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

LEAs which have their ability to apply their powers restricted in some way are said to operate within a jurisdiction. LEAs will have some form of geographic restriction on their ability to apply their powers. The LEA might be able to apply its powers within a country, for example the United States of America's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or its Drug Enforcement Administration; within a division of a country, for example the Australian state Queensland Police; or across a collection of countries, for example international organizations such as Interpol, or the European Union's Europol. LEAs which operate across a collection of countries tend to assist in law enforcement activities, rather than directly enforcing laws, by facilitating the sharing of information necessary for law enforcement between LEAs within those countries, for example Europol has no executive powers. Sometimes a LEA's jurisdiction is determined by the complexity or seriousness of t...

LEAs can be responsible for the enforcement of laws affecting the behaviour of people or the general community, for example the New York City Police Department, or the behaviour of commercial organisations and corporations, for example the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, of for the benefit of the country as a whole, for example the United Kingdom’s Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. Religious law enforcement edit A LEA can be responsible for enforcing secular law or religious law, for example Sharia or Halakha. The significant majority of LEAs around the world are secular, their governing bodies separating religious matters from the governance of their subjects. Religious law enforcement agencies, for example Saudi Arabia’s Mutaween, exist where full separation of government and religious doctrine has not occurred, and are generally referred to as police agencies, typically religious police , because their primary responsibility is for social order within their ju...

Typically a LEA is established and constituted by the governing body it is supporting, and the personnel making up the LEA are from the governing body's subjects, for example the Australian Federal Police is established and constituted by virtue of the Australian Federal Police Act 1979. By Definition, federal LEAs can only be established by the governing body of the relevant federation, divisional and sub divisional LEAs can only be established by their relevant governing bodies, and national LEAs can only be established by the national governing body of a country. For reasons of either logistical efficiency or policy, some divisions with a country will not establish their own LEAs but will instead make arrangements with another LEA, typically from the same country, to provide law enforcement within the division. For example, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is a federal agency and is contracted by most of Canada's provinces and many municipalities to police those divi...

To enable a LEA to prevent, detect, and investigate non compliance with laws, the LEA is endowed with powers by its governing body which are not available to non LEA subjects of a governing body. Typically, a LEA is empowered to varying degrees to: collect information about subjects in the LEA's jurisdiction intrusively search for information and evidence related to the non compliance with a law seize evidence of non compliance with a law seize property and assets from subjects direct subjects to provide information related to the non compliance with a law arrest and detain subjects, depriving them of their liberty, but not incarcerate subjects, for alleged non compliance with a law lawfully deceive subjects These powers are not available to subjects other than LEAs within the LEA's jurisdiction and are typically subject to judicial and civil overview. Usually, these powers are only allowed when it can be shown that a subject is probably already not complying with a law. ...

Because the enforcement of laws has, by definition, a major impact on the society the laws apply to, the agencies which enforce the laws have a specific relevance to the societies in which they operate. Some LEAs have been immortalised in history, literature, and popular media, for example the United Kingdom's Scotland Yard, the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police A small number of LEAs, particularly secret police forces which are unaccountable or have unrestricted powers, are not generally respected by their governing bodies’ subjects, due to the negative impact they have on the subjects. Many fictional LEAs have been created in popular media and literature. See for example List of fictional secret police and intelligence organizations and List of fictional police forces.