 THE MEASUREMENT OF POLICE FORCE EFFICIENCY: AN ASSESSMENT OF U.K. HOME OFFICE POLICYLeigh M. Drake and Richard Simper Contemporary Economic Policy, 2005, vol. 23, issue 4, 465-482 Abstract: Over the past 20 years, governments around the world have implemented strategies and targets to ensure that public services are efficient in the management of resources. In the United Kingdom this common agenda has led to the recent Police Reform Act 2002 in which consideration was given to how police forces can show value for money based on government strategic policy targets. This article presents a critique of the performance radar technique proposed by the Home Office in the United Kingdom as a new public policy objective to assess police force performance. Using an alternative and innovative nonparametric modeling strategy, the article shows that the use of the former approach can produce biased performance rankings and also demonstrate that environmental factors can have a substantial impact on the apparent efficiency of individual police forces. Finally, the results suggest that survey data (as used by the Home Office) should not be used as a basis to assess police performance. (JEL C14, L3, M2) Date: 2005 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:coecpo:v:23:y:2005:i:4:p:465-482 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Contemporary Economic Policy is currently edited by Brad R. Humphreys More articles in Contemporary Economic Policy from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC. |
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