NCJ Number
177456
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 47 Issue: 5 Dated: May 1999 Pages: 59-62
Date Published
1999
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article suggests a way to measure police performance that reflects the goals of community policing.
Abstract
Traditionally, the performance of a police agency in a particular jurisdiction has been judged by the Uniform Crime Reports statistics (crimes known to and recorded by the police in that district) for that jurisdiction. A new method of measuring police performance has been developed that moves beyond the crime statistics to address the factors related to crime. This is not just a measurement of police performance, however; it is a measurement of how well the community as a whole is addressing the factors related to crime. The Crime Measurement Index (CMI) collects data available to every community with a resident population of 25,000 or more. These data pertain to five factors research has shown to be related to crime rate. They are poverty rate, the high school drop-out rate, unemployment, the number of males between the ages of 15 and 20, and single-parent family rates. The primary intent of obtaining and analyzing data on these five factors is to identify potential community problems that have a relationship to crime. This article presents a step- by-step approach for obtaining data for and calculating a community's CMI. A high CMI suggests that a community, in cooperation with the police, must focus on those factors in the CMI that need attention. This effort, if effective, should in turn help reduce the crime rate.