Police accountability
This volume discusses the measurement of police equity, efficiency, and effectiveness; the analysis of alternative methods of operation; and the determination of the feasibility of implementing those alternatives. The readings in the first half of the anthology focus on performance measures from various points of view: the police planner, the comprehensive evaluator, the city administrator, and the concerned citizen. A brief history of policing in the u.s. is presented, with emphasis on the role played by three popular police performance measures: response time, frequency of preventive patrols, and patrol workloads. The discussion moves to more broadly defined issues, such as police use of force, citizen satisfaction, subjective measures of performance, and internal ratings by supervisors, which would be of concern in conducting a comprehensive evaluation of a police department. A separate chapter provides a complete picture of police employment and costs in the U.S. from the 1950's through the early 1970's, including trends in salaries, fringe benefits, and total expenditures, and per capita trends. One public safety performance measure, that of probability of victimization, is discussed in depth. The chapter presents a method for projecting the lifetime homicide victimization probability of an individual born in one of the 50 largest cities in the u.s. the second half of the volume focuses on a key factor that has affected police accountability since the early 1960's; the tremendous growth of police unions. After a brief history of police unions, case studies are considered in which the union has played a major role in the effort of management to improve services or maintain cost increases at some reasonable level. The final two chapters examine the roles that unions can play when management attempts to introduce civilians (generally less expensive than sworn police) into a police department. Tabular data and details of the statistical analysis are included.
