This blog’s question is whether or not one can measure productivity in policing? It is a question that has been sporadically posed over the years, toyed with, but never really answered or explored in serious fashion. Why is that? Most police departments both in Canada and the U.S. are not measuring performance accurately. In a U.S. the National Institute of Justice study which examined 20,000 plus police departments they found that very “few are measuring performance adequately”. In Canada, most of all the measurement tools employed by the variety of police services relies on the statistically broad generalized numbers and percentages; crime reduction clearance rates, response times, number of violent crimes, and enforcement productivity– such as arrests made or tickets issued. Is this the best way to measure productivity or is it even a measurement that carries any meaning in terms of productivity?

At best these are flawed measuring tools which are largely misinterpreted or skewed in their findings. For instance, is a downturn in serious crime a measure of community concerns, when those community concerns usually revolve around other problems and other types of behaviour? Should we be focused on reported crimes when unreported crimes may be the better measurement tool? In terms of the latter, statistically, it is currently estimated that in general terms, unreported crime is three times the amount of reported crime.

Albert Einstein had a phrase, “everything that counts can’t be counted, and everything that can be counted doesn’t count”. Police use a lot of surveys and polls and they talk constantly about overall crime rates, especially when the numbers portray them in a favourable light. However, I am referring here to a stricter economic definition, which is “output per unit of input”. In 2024 as policing costs soar, as transitions and cost comparisons are being trotted out in public discussions about the RCMP moving to a city Surrey Police Service, has it not come time to start looking at the issue of productivity in a more incisive and informative way? In labour terms, productivity is what drives salaries, and traditionally that comes about as a result of technological advancements, which in turn improve productivity, and thus drive higher wages. In economic theory, “workers are paid on the value of the work they produce, industries with higher productivity will tend to have higher wages”. Wages are the representative of the amount of value created in production. Do these theories apply to the economic models of policing? Is it possible to argue that the latest atmospheric increase in police wages have been the result of increased productivity?

Maybe the broad constructs of economic labour theory do not have a direct or easy application to policing models, but when there are no meaningful evaluations of police productivity there can be no meaningful evaluations for the public in terms of cost/benefit, there can be no accountability to local governments, or adequate control for police managers. When no examination is undertaken it is as the National Institute says a problem of the “the most fundamental and serious nature”.

In terms of the lack of productivity studies, police organizations often defend themselves by stating that the broad mandate and public demand for police services means that there is no single measure of productivity in everything that the police are tasked to do. That would seem to be at least partially true. How does one measure productivity of a community policing officer, or a traffic analyst, a uniform officer on the street, or a homicide investigator? How does one compare or measure output of a Federal drug section or Intel section with a uniform officer. They perform almost completely different functions, have different outputs, even though possibly similar goals. However, it seems logical that one should be able to measure the single units separately in terms of their productivity and with some degree of accuracy.

There are two broad types of measuring tools; one that measures outcomes and one that measures process. Last night I watched from my downtown apartment the arrest of an individual on the street by the Vancouver police department. The outcome was easily measured, the individual was handcuffed and was after a fairly lengthy period of time transported to jail. The process was four police cars (including the paddy wagon) and a total of six officers involved to make the single arrest. Having been part of this “process” many times over the years past I could not think of many instances where a single arrest of an unarmed male required this level of police attendance. Has productivity increased or decreased? One would certainly not see this level of police attendance and resources at a small rural police department or RCMP detachment. While stationed in Bella Coola, only one of us would be working at any one time. Can we assume from this observation that police officers are more productive in rural less inhabited locations than in Vancouver?

In another example, many times, especially in my early years I attended serious and fatal accidents as a uniform officer in a semi-rural area of New Brunswick. I was always the one holding the dummy end of the measuring tape and taking crude triangulation notes for the two of us in attendance. Nowadays, most serious traffic accidents seem to involve at a minimum of three or four police cars, a traffic analyst, traffic control people and their vehicles, and maybe someone to fly the drone over the accident. These new measurements also now take endless hours of road closures. In talking to a traffic analyst he estimated that a fatal accident now takes a minimum of 40 hours for him/her just to process the information that has been gathered. In this accident investigation comparison, the output increased in terms of details and displays or reenactments of those measurements, but has productivity increased or decreased in terms of the individual officer? Then the final question is has the overall outcome changed?

In the world I spent a great of time in, we used to attend homicide scenes with two individuals and then you would work with forensics and the uniform officers that were in attendance. Now, homicides are attended (at least in IHIT) by a minimum of eight officers, and you still work with forensics and the local uniform contingent. If you were lucky and had prosecutable charges, the Report to Crown Counsel with a variety of attachments may have been a couple of hundred pages along with boxes of transcribed statements and enumerated exhibits, as you went to trial. Now, with the advent of technologies and digitization, especially in the audible and visual recording of events, I am told that the average homicide consists of about 5,000 pages. Again, the output or volume of materials presented has clearly increased, but at least statistically the outcome is about the same. So has productivity increased or decreased?

None of this theorizing or productivity rests solely in the policing world. It would be extremely difficult to argue that the Court system and the lawyers involved have become more productive in the last number of years. It takes a great deal longer to get into court and the trials seem endless. Even the Supreme Court of Canada in the Jordan decision said it is all taking much too long. Of course, this is also the same court that gave us Stinchcombe and the ridiculous levels of disclosure now required under the law– which in turn has made the court process the equivalent of a marathon and not a sprint. How could one possibly argue that the growth of the Federal government ranks is the result of increased productivity?

Has crime become more complicated? It is something I always hear and this is a cogent argument when it is crime that involves the complications of the internet, whether it be fraud, bullying or sexual harassment. In those cases, the process has become more complicated and the outcomes also seem to be diminishing. In the standard criminal code, statutory offence or traffic offence, the crime definition has not changed, the eventual outcome has not changed, what has changed is the processing.

If you go to the politically popular single measurement of “bang for your buck”, it would clearly be ridiculous to argue that two trained police officers, making double overtime, should be standing directing traffic at a parade barricade. Is there a better more economical way to perform this task? Is this a productive use of highly paid resources? If not, then the bigger question is why is it still being done?

This is all to say, the tools of economics should and could be used in policing. Resources need to be put to the studying of the day to day performance in policing. There is nothing to be feared if one is arguing for greater productivity and use of those resources. Now, the police use broad sometimes irrelevant outcomes as a measurement of their overall worth and effectiveness. The actual process and levels of productivity are not being watched, and if policing is like the rest of the country, productivity is trending lower. Until we do and in a transparent fashion, there are going to be more and more questions by the taxpayers as to whether one can justify police budgets and the hiring of police officers going into the future.

Photo courtesy of Arty-Arnaud from Pixabay – Some Rights Reserved