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63 Police J. 361 (1990)
Indicators for Assessing the Efficiency of Police Deployment

handle is hein.journals/policejl63 and id is 369 raw text is: ALAN MARLOW BSc
Chief Superintendent, Bedfordshire Police.
INDICATORS FOR ASSESSING
THE EFFICIENCY OF POLICE
DEPLOYMENT
Introduction
The now legendary Home Office Circular 114/83 made it clear that the
efficient deployment of resources was a fundamental responsibility of
Chief Officers. The criterion of efficiency requires that the supply of
police resources be matched to the demands for police services. Force
establishments have been derived through bargaining in economic
environments of growth and constraint and thus largely reflect a series of
spasmodic gains argued upon differing factors and needs. In other words,
a Police establishment is derived from a series of historical resource
allocation decisions, which may or may not correspond to policing 'needs'
that presently exist. What a Chief Officer has, may or may not be fair or
adequate, but what he does with Force resources must be linked to the
policing demands of the area.
Changing demographic factors and style of policing may result in
imbalances in the apportionment of police resources.
This paper describes an attempt using available indicators, to assess
the efficiency of police deployment in a county Force with a mixed urban
and rural population. The appropriateness of measures of the demands for
police services is also discussed.
Methodology
The smallest spatial units within the Force are 'beats' and each beat can be
related to statistics of reported crime and total 'incidents'. It was also
possible to calculate the number of police 'man hours' allocated to each
beat. Population data were obtained from the county council and, in turn,
expressed in terms of the beat unit. The information was used to create a
database for micro-computer analysis.
Measures of 'Demands'
There were two available measures of publicly generated 'demands' for
Police services, which will also be available to most Forces crime
statistics and total 'incident statistics', both of which have their shortcomings
as indicators.
i) Crime Statistics
In most instances, whether a crime is reported or not depends upon an
individual's decision to communicate the facts to the Police. The British
Crime Survey indicated that, on average, only 20 per cent of the total crime

October 1990

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