How are police doing in combating crime? An exploratory study of efficiency analysis of the Policía Nacional Civil in Guatemala

Abstract

Purpose – In almost all modern societies, police forces are at the forefront of ongoing activities to reduce and prevent crime. Both in practice and in popular belief, police forces are the visible presence for maintaining security and safety to citizens in municipalities, towns and cities, and from cities to local neighborhoods. This paper aims to investigate how efficiently the police in Guatemala are in combating crime using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Design/methodology/approach – The study used DEA to measure the efficiency of police stations in fighting crime in Guatemala based on their inputs and outputs. Findings – The analyses showed that only four out of 22 police departments were considered efficient. The average efficiency score for the 22 police departments was 62 percent. Research limitations/implications – Data on crime and police are limited in Guatemala. Further research using DEA would be particularly relevant if the methodology included: a wider range of inputs/outputs, longer panel data, and more precise estimates of the effect of contextual variables. The findings of the study can inform police managers and policymakers to allocate security resources more efficiently. Practical implications – Given the low levels of inefficiency of police departments in Guatemala, police management would have to ensure that clearance rates increase significantly by either increasing the human resource capacity of the police departments according to the needs so that clearance rates can be improved and be more effective and efficient in combating crime. Originality/value – This is the first in depth study of police efficiency in Central America. In an increasingly resource strapped environment employing DEA might be a useful tool to improve human and financial resource allocation.

Bulgaria Spending Review on Policing and Firefighting

“…Because of its non-parametric nature, the number of units under analysis affects the number of inputs and outputs employed. DEA methodology requires that the number of DMUs must be at least three times larger than the number of inputs and outputs employed (Barros, 2007in Alda, 2014. It is important to use measures that enable a more accurate reflection of the institution's organizational performance.…”

“…Depending on the environment in which the police operate, the effect of these exogenous factors may be larger in some areas than others. For example, recent evidence from developing countries in Latin America and the Caribbean show that socioeconomic and demographic measures, such as poverty, inequality, high levels of unemployment, and the size of the youth cohort, had, on average, negative effects on the levels of efficiency (Alda, 2013(Alda, , 2014(Alda, , 2016a(Alda, , 2016b(Alda, , 2017.…”

“…Studies in both developed and developing countries have employed the crime clearance rate as an output measure to examine the efficiency of police organizations (see for example, Darrough and Heineke, 1979;Thanassoulis, 1995, Nyhan andMartin, 1999;Drake and Simper, 2000;Drake and Simper, 2002b;Barros, 2007;and Alda, 2014). Studies in the US, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean region have relied Also, spending reviews on police organizations have employed crime clearance rates as the preferred output measure (see for example the World Bank's Mexico's Public Expenditure Review 43 .…”

The Effects of Body-Worn Cameras on Police Efficiency: A Study of Local Police Agencies in the US

“…In fact, previous research on police efficiency has used these variables as outputs in an efficiency model (c.f. Alda, 2014;Alda & Dammert, 2019). Thus, the literature review focuses on the strand of research that more closely approximates the study of efficiency as an outcome, although no studies to date have used a measure of police efficiency as their primary outcome of interest.…”

“…Figure 1 summarizes this study's results. The scatterplot illustrates the correlation between the number of BWCs and a standard police output measured by the percentage of all crimes cleared (Alda, 2014;Barros, 2007). Figure 1 shows a positive correlation between the number of BWCs and higher efficiency levels because agencies with more BWCs appear to clear a higher percentage of crimes.…”