Quiz According to Moore, why should police departments embrace accountability and measure performance? (hint: Moore provides 3 reasons, give me 1)

Using Performance Measurement to Improve Policing

External Accountability Why should police managers embrace it? Citizens demand it It’s the right thing to do It’s impossible to manage without it Which is the most important?

Why is it impossible? Managers insist officers be accountable to public values, but this often comes at the expense of individual officers’ benefit When demands are placed on officers to meet public’s values, supervisors often side with officers to keep morale (and performance) up. When this is done, police end up operating in accordance with their own values, not the public’s. The only way public values “win” is when specific standards of performance are encoded in a system of accountability

Private vs Public Private companies have a definable purpose—if profitability is lost, the whole company goes under. Not true with police: the “bottom line” is whatever the authorizing environment wants Ideally, managers want the external environment to make consistent, powerful demands, and that these be the same thing supervisors are demanding

Internal Performance Systems How powerful they are depends on: Alignment of internal/external systems Alignment of system w/organizational culture Frequency of measurement/speed of feedback Visibility of reports How results are interpreted (start/end)

What should PDs measure? What do PDs usually measure? Activities and outputs (e.g., arrests) What should they measure? Outcomes (e.g., crime reduction) Why don’t they? Hard to measure & occur “down the road” Outputs are easier/less expensive and have to occur first

Compstat Strengths: Focus on accountability Innovation: organizational learning Weaknesses: Only captured value of lowering crime Did not capture costs (esp. authority) of lowering crime Focused squarely on lowering crime via law enforcement instead of other means

Current baseline Orientated around traditional policing model: Operational costs and their distributions Activities/outputs related to crime (e.g., reported crimes, arrests, clearance rates)

Limitations of current baseline Traditional model fails to capture all values produced by police: Some information is captured and used, but in simple ways (e.g., operating costs) Some information is captured, but seldom used (e.g., civil suits) Some information must be newly gathered (e.g., fear of crime) via surveys or evaluations Gathering new info or using existing info in new ways is an investment in learning, since time and money must be spent.

Takeaway Points Both citizens and police admins need high-quality performance measures Police capture only a portion of the value they create. They do well on crime control, holding offenders to account, and use of financial resources, but miss everything else, especially authority. Existing performance systems treat police as a production line, not a job shop. Not much attention is paid to organizational investments

Room for Improvement To improve performance systems, 3 steps must be taken: Recognize and treat as important all values police produce and make them part of the police mission Police must be held accountable for how they use their authority, not just financial resources. Police must concerns themselves with strengthening their future capabilities, and not just present performance.