Crisis Negotiation Competition & Seminar

This competition is one of the longest running negotiator training venues in the country and one of the largest held each year.

Seminars provide advanced and basic training for hostage/crisis negotiators and personnel involved with critical incident situations and may include police, correctional officers and jailers, tactical/special operations team members, other crisis response personnel, administrators and managers. The training seminars are hosted by Texas State University’s School of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Hays County Sheriff’s Office, and the San Marcos Police Department. All training seminars offer TCOLE credit and comply with the 40 hour requirement.

Date: January 9-11, 2024

Location: Classes and competition at the Hines Academic Center at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX (barring any calamitous or unpredictable circumstances).

Check-in will be held on Tuesday, January 9th from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. 

For participants employed in the state of Texas, TCOLE credit will only be awarded after confirmed attendance. To receive TCOLE credit, DOB and PID information must be provided at the time of registration.

The cost of registration is $125.00 per person. The cost covers all events, including the awards banquet on Thursday evening.

Practice makes perfect! A motto that has proven to be true time and time again. Given the nature of the situations handled by negotiators, finding ways to practice can be difficult and limited to classroom brainstorms, lectures, and a read of the latest journals. The crisis' simulated for this conference, allows negotiators to actually train for specific instances. With the 'captors' kept private, negotiation teams are forced to utilize their skills as they would in the real world, making the training experience unique and quite beneficial.

The competition/seminar serves several valuable functions:

1. Teams “work” a standardized scenario and are assessed by outside evaluators who are themselves trained and experienced negotiators. These evaluators provide feedback the team can use to improve their skills.
2. The evaluations are standardized, written and given to the team at the end of the training. These evaluations cover all aspects of team performance and communication issues.
3. Negotiators get the opportunity to meet and interact with negotiators from other agencies and network, helping your team expand its knowledge base and see how other agencies operate.

Our goal is to provide realistic training in which the scenarios are experientially based. When working a mock hostage situation that is presented, a team's performance is evaluated by trained and experienced negotiators, which provides an opportunity to learn how other teams handle certain situations. The Hostage Negotiation Competition & Seminar is supplemental to any training hostage teams have previously received.

Dr. Wayman Mullins
Diplomate of Police Psychology

For questions or concerns, please contact Dr. Wayman Mullins at wm04@txstate.edu.