This paper examines the major evaluation methodologies used in policing and criminal justice administration, comparing their strengths and limitations. Beginning with traditional narrative supervisory review rooted in paramilitary organizational structures, the paper traces the evolution of crime mapping from 19th-century pin mapping to the NYPD's CompStat system. It analyzes the problem of data manipulation that undermined CompStat's objectivity, then presents the FBI's comprehensive outcomes-based evaluation framework developed by Dr. W. Dean Lee. The paper argues that no single methodology is sufficient and recommends integrating multiple evaluation approaches to achieve more accurate, reliable assessments of program and personnel performance.
As in the case of any other professional industry, policing and other criminal justice administration functions must maintain a system of agency evaluation to assess the effectiveness of their programs. Evaluations encompass effectiveness with respect to achieving specific strategic objectives, supervisory controls, program design, methodology, and fiscal efficiency.
In professional business administration, the criteria for evaluations generally relate primarily to profit margins and secondarily to most other elements of the venture. Within government administration, there is no profit margin per se, although fiscal responsibility, resourcefulness, and optimization remain important concerns. Because the measure of fiscal efficiency in government is operating within available budgets, performance is the primary measure of success, and the criteria used for program evaluations are defined by factors like crime rates, prosecutorial efficiency, and criminal recidivism.
Policing also differs fundamentally from professional business administration in that exposure to dangers to life and limb and the responsibility to maintain the safety of coworkers are necessary concerns. In that respect, evaluation criteria applicable to hazardous industrial operations management — such as mining, large construction, steelwork, and logging — are more closely related to evaluation criteria within law enforcement. Still, law enforcement is unique by virtue of its perpetual focus on public well-being as the principal measure of success in its field.
Many aspects of contemporary evaluations and review in policing reflect systems originally designed in the earliest era of American policing, long before policing organizational structure, operations, and capabilities resembled their modern counterparts. Supervisory review and crime mapping, for example, both date back to the 19th century. Other aspects of evaluations in policing and criminal justice administration rely on modern computerization, employing methodologies that would never have been possible previously.
Each evaluation methodology offers specific advantages as well as potential limitations, especially when relied upon exclusively. Combining different evaluation methodologies provides greater overall perspective and may reduce the effect of any weaknesses inherent in individual evaluation design and methodology.
Originally, policing modeled itself after the traditional organizational and structural components of military organizations. Although many other aspects of policing have devolved substantially from elements of their original paramilitary design, most modern policing agencies still retain the paramilitary model in principle (Schmalleger, 2008).
Throughout professional business administration and police administration alike, supervisory review is a main component of program and employee performance evaluation. However, in policing and criminal justice administration, the structural hierarchy and various other aspects of interpersonal communications differ from supervision within traditional business models as they pertain to police supervision. Nevertheless, the essential element of narrative review by immediate supervisors is substantially similar across both contexts (Coleman & Thomas, 2002).
The main limitation of traditional supervisory review — especially as the sole means of program or personnel performance evaluation — is its degree of subjectivity. Ideally, supervisory review would be carried out strictly in relation to objective criteria. More specifically, the main responsibility of the supervisor during review would consist of applying purely objective criteria to program results and personnel performance.
However, whereas narrative evaluation by immediate supervisors often provides useful results, any review process that includes supervisory evaluation must do so within the framework of other performance measures. This is necessary because of the ubiquitous nature of human subjectivity. This criticism applies throughout modern business administration, but policing combines high-stress public responsibilities and criticism with working conditions within a paramilitary structure that makes the policing environment uniquely challenging (Coleman & Thomas, 2002). Therefore, both the risk of subjective contamination and the potentially detrimental impact of inaccurate or ineffective evaluations increase the need for multidimensional evaluation systems.
One of the earliest innovations in municipal policing originated with the first American public policing organization in New York City within the first decade of the establishment of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in 1845. Pin mapping consisted of simply using different colored thumbtacks to mark areas of the city's map on the wall of police administrators (Safir, 2003). In an approach to policing cities that is still used throughout modern policing today, police administrators assign patrol services and tactical details to particular areas based on the latest information on crime rates and specific types of criminal activity identified through police reports and calls for service (Conlon, 2004; Safir, 2003).
The modern incarnation of pin mapping was also designed, developed, pioneered, and implemented by the NYPD beginning in the 1990s. Under the stewardship of Police Commissioner Howard Safir, the NYPD began analyzing daily crime statistics collected from its 40,000 officers throughout the five boroughs of New York City and generating computer modeling of crime trends. This system, dubbed CompStat, allowed the accurate identification of crime trends with pinpoint precision, often permitting nearly as precise predictive modeling through extrapolation (Safir, 2003).
The other main benefit and purpose of CompStat was that it enabled police administrators to grade the performance of every precinct according to any criteria defined by policy considerations. That aspect of CompStat was relied upon heavily by NYPD administration to the extent that Commissioner Safir reassigned, removed, or demoted fifty-four precinct commanders during his tenure as commissioner between 1996 and 2000 (Safir, 2003). Naturally, the technical means of data collection and analysis differ quite profoundly from those available to previous generations of police administrators, but the actual methodology of the CompStat system is very similar in principle to the original pin mapping that has been in use for almost a century and a half throughout modern municipal police organizations worldwide (Schmalleger, 2008).
"Data manipulation undermining CompStat objectivity"
"FBI multi-variable model integrating evaluation methods"
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