Measuring police efficiency in India: an application of data envelopment analysis

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to develop a method for measuring police efficiency.Design/methodology/approachThe design of this paper is to apply the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a comparative or relative efficiency measuring mechanism to police‐work‐related data from India. This application provides a rationale for identifying good performance practices. It helps in generating targets of performance, the optimum levels of operations, role models that inefficient departments can emulate and the extent to which improvements can be made over a period of time.FindingsThe paper measures the performances of State police units in India and the results suggest ways in which some State police departments can improve their overall efficiency.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests ways in which the efficiency of any unit of criminal justice systems may be formulated and compared across different units of the system.Originality/valueThe value is that it introduces a new technique to police practitioners and researchers and demonstrates its efficacy by case analysis from India.

Does modernization improve performance: evidence from Indian police

“…Moreover, note that the Indian Police Service (IPS) is a federally recruited body which forms the apex of the hierarchy in the police system. Its officers are selected, trained and treated alike and then allotted to different states, again implying that the policing system is almost unitary in the country (Verma and Gavirneni, 2006).…”

“…In India, the police are organized at the state level and each of the twenty eight states 5 has its own police organization which works under one command under the power of state government (Verma and Gavirneni, 2006). We choose states as the unit of analysis since the organization are similar everywhere.…”

“…DEA has been used for measuring the efficiency and productivity of police in a number of studies (Thanassoulis 1995;Carrington et al 1997;Nyhan and Martin 1999;Sun 2002;Diez-Ticio and Mancebon 2002;Drake and Simper 2000, 2001, 2003a,b, 2004, 2005aVerma and Gavirneni 2006;Goltz 2008;Gorman and Ruggiero 2008;García-Sánchez 2007, 2009Wu et al 2010, García-Sánchez et al 2011aGarcía-Sánchez et al, 2011, 2013. Most of these studies have the single objective of measuring technical efficiency using an input oriented efficiency measure and are limited by the consideration of a single time period.…”

“…DEA, free disposal hull (FDH), super-efficiency DEA and stochastic frontier analysis in order to assess police force efficiency of English and Welsh police force. Verma and Gavirneni (2006) is the only available study that measures the efficiency of police force in India. 7 It employs DEA technique for measuring the efficiency using 1997 crime data.…”

“…As such, any major initiative to improve the functioning and efficiency of the police department has to take place within the domain of the concerned state government. The police departments are poorly funded, even though the police expenditures usually comprise a third of the total budget of state governments (Verma and Gavirneni, 2006). The majority of funds are used to pay the salaries of the police personnel and limited amount is available for general maintenance of vehicles, buildings, communication equipment and uniform.…”