Developing a structured framework for measuring police efficiency

Abstract

Purpose The growing emphasis on “managerialism” in police and the pressure to employ scientific methods of performance measurement warrants the need for a structured framework. The scope of police duties is large as it relates to several preventive and corrective action related to public safety and crime management. A challenge in measuring police performance is to take into consideration a range of variables that can potentially influence performance. The purpose of this paper is to provide a structured framework for measuring different facets of police efficiency, which is especially useful in managerial decision making. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses data envelopment analysis and discusses efficiency measurement in terms of the technical, managerial and scale efficiency, resources utilization patterns, returns-to-scale analysis and measurement of super-efficiency. The application of framework is based on the data of the police stations of Lahore, a large metropolitan city in Pakistan. Findings The paper shows the application of different measures of efficiency in making decisions pertaining resources allocation, prioritizing areas for improvement and identifying benchmarks for performance improvement. Different measures of efficiency are presented in the form of a structured framework. Practical implications Managers can use this framework to glean rich insights into different types of efficiency and sources of inefficiency. Further, a discussion of variables provided in this paper can be especially useful in determining trade-offs during the selection of inputs and outputs. Originality/value The key contribution of this paper is in providing a multifaceted efficiency measurement framework, that is capable of providing rich insights into the sources of inefficiency and helps scientific decision making. To the best of our knowledge, such a multifaceted approach has not been provided in previous publications.