Assessing the Activities of the Police as a Part of the National Security Sector:

Abstract

The relevance of the article is conditioned by the need to ensure the effective activity of the subjects engaged in ensuring the national security, one of which is the police. Taking into account the fact that one of such tools is the assessment of police performance, the issue of studying the experience of the countries in this area is important to find the most optimal models for assessing the performance of these structures, which will contribute to their better fulfillment of the tasks assigned to them by law. The purpose of the article is to investigate the features of evaluating police performance, which will allow identifying advanced practices, to intensify the search for ways to improve the evaluation of police performance. The goal has been achieved using dogmatic, statistical, comparative legal methods, and systemic-structural approach. The authors revealed the specifics of the evaluation of police performance in Ukraine, the USA, Canada, France, and Great Britain. Emphasis is placed on evaluating police performance based on the level of trust of citizens and statistics. It is concluded that the trust of citizens in the police is necessary for the effective accomplishment of the tasks by the latter. It is noted that the use of statistical data to formulate an objective conclusion on the effectiveness of police performance is questionable because of the ability of the police management to manipulate the data. The areas for minimizing such manipulations are as follows: (1) introduction of administrative or disciplinary liability for manipulation of statistics on police performance; (2) conducting an independent review of the statistics provided by the police about their activities; (3) use of latent crime as a criterion for evaluating police performance. It is concluded that each of these areas needs considerable improvement. The findings complement previous research and have implications for improving the evaluation of the Ukrainian police and police of foreign countries.