How efficient and effective are the police?
The funding of policing in England and Wales has undergone a number of radical changes in recent years. Over the course of an 18-month study, researchers from the Gwilym Gibbons Centre for Public Policy analysed the three funding models in Great Britain – those for England, Wales, and Scotland – in order to understand the effectiveness of decision-making and resource-allocation processes used by Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and Chief Constable. The research was carried out by Professor Iain McLean, Dr Anika Ludwig, and Nuffield student Mike Norton. The authors assert that measuring police effectiveness, efficiency, and value for money is important, urgent, and difficult. It is important because as with any other public service, policymakers want to know whether money is well spent when it could be spent on many other good things, or not spent at all and tax reduced instead. It is urgent in any context where spending on policing and/or crime are decreasing. It is difficult for multiple reasons, which are reviewed in the final report. Further details about the research project are available here: http://ggcpp.nuff.ox.ac.uk/index.php/projects/ The report has been published online here: http://ggcpp.nuff.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Resource-Allocation-Processes-in-Policing-in-Great-Britain-%E2%80%93-Project-report..pdf The report was launched in the House of Lords on Monday 20 March.