Criticisms Of Evaluating Police Performance
Identify the traditional performance evaluations used to evaluate police officer performance. Discuss some of the criticisms of these performance metrics According to CALEA, the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies, the four traditional measures of police performance are crime rates, arrests and citations, clearances, and response time (CALEA, 2003). Crime rates are important to all police departments because the main goal is to reduce crime to as low a rate as possible, so for it to be used in performance evaluations only makes sense. The number of arrests is one of, if not the most easily measurable statistics that police officers can gather regarding their performance. Much like arrests, the number of citations are
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[such as] justice, integrity, fear reduction, citizen satisfaction, protection and help for those who cannot protect or help themselves, and many others” (CALEA, 2003). One of the major critiques of measuring performance through changes in crime rates is that not all crime is reported to police; therefore, making it impossible to have data that that is entirely accurate. Evaluating performance based on arrest and citation statistics has also come under fire because, as George Kelling has suggested, that they sometimes represent a failure by police to use other, more useful solutions (CALEA, 2003). Clearance rates present an issue like that of crime rates in that they are extremely difficult to measure. Finally, response times run into the issue of there not being a way to come up with a standardized goal across the nation, states, or even cities due to differing geographies of the area and technology available to the officers. The biggest challenges to the different aspects of traditional performance evaluation tools all stem from the difficulty to accurately measure. For the evaluations in totality, the main critiques are that the definitions and goals are not clear and fail to explain how police work should be measured and the “halo effect” can lead some officers to have favorable evaluations because of success in one area despite failing in others (Walker & Katz,
[such as] justice, integrity, fear reduction, citizen satisfaction, protection and help for those who cannot protect or help themselves, and many others” (CALEA, 2003). One of the major critiques of measuring performance through changes in crime rates is that not all crime is reported to police; therefore, making it impossible to have data that that is entirely accurate. Evaluating performance based on arrest and citation statistics has also come under fire because, as George Kelling has suggested, that they sometimes represent a failure by police to use other, more useful solutions (CALEA, 2003). Clearance rates present an issue like that of crime rates in that they are extremely difficult to measure. Finally, response times run into the issue of there not being a way to come up with a standardized goal across the nation, states, or even cities due to differing geographies of the area and technology available to the officers. The biggest challenges to the different aspects of traditional performance evaluation tools all stem from the difficulty to accurately measure. For the evaluations in totality, the main critiques are that the definitions and goals are not clear and fail to explain how police work should be measured and the “halo effect” can lead some officers to have favorable evaluations because of success in one area despite failing in others (Walker & Katz,