Police Performance and Activity Measurement (2000)

Traditionally, police performance has been largely assessed in terms of statistics such as crime rates and, more recently, community satisfaction. However, while these major approaches can provide an indication of what police may spend their time on, they do not directly inform us of what they do spend their time on. In October, 1999, at the National Centre for Crime and Justice Statistics Information Day organised by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, South Australia Police (SAPOL) showcased an emerging method by which police time spent on certain activities can be measured. Known as measurement, this approach is a significant management information tool. A broad example, using the SAPOL experience, of the type of information that can be elicited from the data is reported in this paper. SAPOL expect that this measurement data will be an important source of performance and budgeting information for the future, and so have trialed an electronic survey method to improve the methods used in this approach. Adam Graycar Director In the past, data on reported crime rates and crime clear-up rates were used to justify the establishment of police services and to gain community acceptance of police (Hortz 1996). Such rates were later maintained as critical indicators of performance. It was argued that, due to the nature of policing, police work was difficult to measure and cost by other means. Therefore, these measures have historically constituted the main form of information for evaluating police services, at the expense of more meaningful measures. Such measures of police performance have also suited the traditional interpretation of the police role, which has been narrowly defined terms of crime and law enforcement-related activities (Bond 1996). The main limitation of these traditional police performance indicators is that they essentially social indicators. This means it is difficult to determine the true nature and extent of the impact of police activity on the intended result (Cherrett 1993). As a result, it often difficult to find consistent improvement in police performance using these indicators, as evidenced by the recent experiences of England and Wales (Rhyddrech 1999). Measuring Police Performance In measuring police performance, the resources used towards police activities (essentially police time) have commonly been ignored (Bond 1996). However, resources are the only factor in the which can definitely be determined (Cherrett 1993, p. 42). Furthermore: ...being clear about what various resources have done, what activities the police have been involved in, is a far firmer base from which to build indicators about how the police performing. (Cherrett 1993, p. 42) Of particular interest is how these resources committed across proactive and reactive policing programs (White & Perrone 1997). The literature notes that between 80 and 90 per cent of the budget provided to police services is dedicated to personnel costs (for example, Cherrett 1993; Grabosky 1988; Edwards 1999). Therefore, police officers clearly the greatest resource available to the police service (Cherrett 1993). The traditional approach of apportioning these integral resources to relevant activities has been to allocate personnel to particular areas (Cherrett 1993). However, this approach conceals the true utility of these personnel. Therefore, closer monitoring of how these officers actually employed is the most accurate way of gauging how resources in fact allocated. Notably, there has been a growing body of research on what police do, in an attempt to streamline their efforts (Edwards 1999). This research has found that: ...whatever measure is made of police activity, it has never been found by any researcher that police idle: they spend much of their time doing tasks which not directly related to crime or public order or other core functions, but this time is fully accounted for in carrying out tasks required by somebody. …