Policing, Ethics and Human Rights by Peter Neyroud Alan Beckley

Author:Peter Neyroud, Alan Beckley [Peter Neyroud, Alan Beckley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781903240151
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 2896238
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Many years ago, Jones and Silverman (1984) argued that ‘the inherent dominance of efficiency over effectiveness will encourage monetary value rather than social value in policing’ (p. 31). A focus on the effectiveness of policing, i.e. on the outcomes for society, is missing from police performance management. The dominance of measures of public demand for services and measures of activity (behaviour) and output have overshadowed any concern with outcome measures. This is unlikely to be rectified by an efficiency index.

Effective performance management requires not only agreement between stakeholders as to purpose, but compatible expectations about police performance. Such expectations ought to be reflected in the methods of control adopted and the performance management system that is inherent in those different methods of control.

No consistency of purpose, expectation or performance management presently exists in policing. Therefore, in the control paradigm, ritual control dominates. The appearance of rationality is satisfied by the publication of statistics on expenditure, objectives, performance and crime. The public may believe that these are all inter-related. However, despite the value in any individual measures, there is an absence of rationality because of the absence of understanding about the relationship between input, behaviour, output and outcome, i.e. the lack of understanding of cause and effect relationships. The figures suggest a ‘magic formula’ by which resources can be converted to actions and actions into outcomes for society. Managers adopt this ritual form of control, as it provides the rationality for managerial behaviour, while legitimating the organisation with its principals.

Consequently, tensions exist between principals and police managers-as-agents and agency costs in police forces are high because of the need to satisfy multiple principals and intermediate agents, and because of the lack of attention by either HMIC or the Audit Commission to compliance costs.

Calls for the costing of police services, 2 per cent per annum efficiency savings, the introduction of best value legislation and a proposed efficiency index may serve only to further confuse the measurement of police performance by adding further variables or complexity.

The inconsistency, imprecision and ambiguity of performance management makes judgements as to performance by any of the principals, intermediate agents or police managers-as-agents virtually impossible. This also leads to ethical and human rights challenges for police officers faced with the requirements (and the rewards) that follow from subscription to the performance culture.

This chapter has proposed that the police service:

move from the notion of contract and agency to that of a policy network in which purposes and performance management might be developed more by consensus and cooperation;

recognise that police performance management displays the rhetoric of instrumentality and rationality, but that such rationality is a myth. Crime and PI data in their present form are inadequate to manage police performance;

move from a rational, control-oriented paradigm to a learning-oriented paradigm, based on values or ‘higher principals’;

adopt processes of organisational learning that permit questions about purposes and expectations as much as about the resource-behaviour-outcome relationships that may occur, and which can be used to understand the causes of incidents.

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