A Measure of Public Safety and its Application to the Criminal Justice System

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A Measure of Public Safety and its Application to
the Criminal Justice System

• Roger Bowles, University of York
• Advanced Institute of Management Research
• Conference on Measuring
• Performance in the Public Sector
• NIESR
• 2-3 March 2004

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Public Safety and the Quality of Life
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Crime and the citizen

• Citizen focus on safety from crime
• Prominent component of Quality of Life
• Fear of crime and the reality of crime
• Costs of crime
• Victim costs
• Avoidance costs
• CJS costs
• Private and public security provision

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Citizen Targets and Instruments
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Instruments and Agencies

• Many agencies, supported through local and
  national taxes, contribute to local and wider
  public safety levels
• Police
• Prosecution Service
• Court Service
• Prison Service
• Probation Service
• Education bodies
• Public health bodies (especially drug-related)
• Public housing departments
• How are these agencies held to account?

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Performance Monitoring in the CJS

• A variety of Inspectorates, Standards Units,
  Authorities and Government Offices (including
  NAO, AC, Home Office, Regional Government
  Offices) monitor and control delivery of services
• CDRPs are completing self-assessments prior to
  more formal assessment
• Recently-created Local Criminal Justice Boards
  could be used as interface between citizens and
  service providers
• Many initiatives, pilots and schemes are
  evaluated ad hoc using a variety of
  methodologies, not all very rigorous

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Literature

• Public safety not discussed much explicitly in
  the UK cf US
• Long-standing conjecture (and some empirical
  evidence) of a link between deprivation and crime
• Earlier work on crime recording practice as
  endogenous Carr-Hill Stern
• Limited analysis of police efficiency using DEA
  and SFA to explore links between inputs and
  outputs Spottiswoode Report on Police
• Recent Home Office guidelines to evaluators of
  Crime Reduction Programme Dhiri Brand

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Existing measures of Public Safety

• Raw crime rates
• Number of crimes per thousand of population
• Summed (un-weighted) across offence types
• Fear of crime measures
• Subjective measures based on surveys
• Insurance-based measures
• Variations in premiums for cover against motor
  theft or household burglary

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York Index of Public Safety

• A household-oriented measure of security, with
  victim focus
• Can be thought of as one component in a wider
  measure of the Quality of Life
• Can be nested in a wider burden of crime
  approach
• A transparent methodology
• Uses objective data about crime rates and costs
  of victimisation

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Properties of an Index of Public Safety

• Limited to values between 0 and 100
• 0 represents complete lack of security
• 100 represents complete security
• Able to make comparisons across areas within a
  country or (potentially) across countries
• Responds positively to improvements in crime
  rates (and clear-up rates if desired)
• Fear of crime can be used (if desired) to
  influence the weighting given to components of
  the index even if it is itself excluded
• The relative costs to victims drive the weight
  given to different offence types

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Developing a Risk-based Index

• Safety is viewed as the opposite of risk
• If the probability of experiencing an offence is
  p then the probability of remaining safe from it
  is (1-p)
• The economic social costs of different offence
  types are an appropriate weight when aggregating
  Brand Price (2000)

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Applications of YIPS

• Decomposition of safety level by offence category
• Comparison across areas and across offences with
  national, regional or other benchmarks see page
  2 of handout
• Comparison with other indicators of deprivation
• Meaningful comparisons through time (subject to
  data)
• Base for reviewing CJS agency performance

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Public Safety outcomes, environment and resource
inputsthe basic hypotheses

• Public safety (Y)
• (-)
• Deprivation (D) ()
• ()
• Police resources (X)

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Observed input-outcome pairs
Yorks Dales, E1
City of York, E2gtE1
Outcome, Y
X1
X2
Police inputs (per cap), X
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Deprivation, funding and police strength
Outcome-egalitarian
Funding formula
Police per capita, X
Actual Police strength
Deprivation, E
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Public safety outcome deprivation London
Manchester
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Measuring Police Efficiency

• Public safety outcome achieved depends on
  deprivation and resource inputs
• Controlling for D and X can identify an expected
  outcome Y
• Efficiency measure can be based on observed Y
  relative to Y
• Might be based on deviation, or deviation squared
  etc.
• Good performance can be rewarded (more spending
  discretion) or penalised (more resources go to
  under-performing forces)

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Bottom-up approaches

• Model thus far has been top-down,
  functionally-driven review from centre in
  Williamsons corporate sector terminology it is
  U-form not M-form of organisation
• Appropriate for questions such as funding
  formulae and budget allocations
• Less appropriate for inducing a client focus or
  reflecting local preferences about policing
  priorities
• Focus now on service delivery mechanisms and
  accountability
• Need to account for outcomes delivered jointly by
  agencies working in partnerships or teams

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Local performance monitoring control

• Police and LAs (through 376 CDRPs in E W) set
  themselves targets to reduce crime
• Police are monitored through Police Authorities
  (local) and by an inspectorate Police Standards
  Unit (central)
• 42 Local Criminal Justice Boards (comprising
  chiefs of key local agencies, including police)
  ensure a joined up approach to the key criminal
  justice targets
• This opens the possibility of monitoring (local)
  public safety as a joint product of local
  agencies
• But incentive compatibility problems result
  because
• The LCJBs have little control over resource
  allocation
• Efficiency comparisons are made mostly on a
  functional basis rather than on the basis of the
  public safety level delivered locally

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Alternatives

• A radical approach would give LCJBs (or possibly
  CDRPs) a central role in purchasing services from
  local agencies delivering public safety on a
  PCT kind of model
• Contracting with police for delivery of
  specialist functions
• Contracting with agencies (operating alone or in
  consortia) for delivery of local services to
  combat key targets such as volume crime
  (burglary, auto crime) and anti-social behaviour
• Accountability via a measure such as YIPS

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Concluding remarks

• The paper offers a new measure of public safety
• Efficiency analysis is best adapted to reflect
  the role of deprivation before application to the
  police
• Within police areas the decomposition of public
  safety enabled by YIPS can be used to prioritise
  crime categories
• Local participation might be based on a
  re-modelling of LCJBs (or CDRPs) along the lines
  of Primary Care Trusts
• Most agencies produce a lot of data, not all well
  used
• Methodology of economic evaluation of CJS needs
  improvement, especially choice of outcome
  measures