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The purpose of this paper is to propose a non‐parametric methodology to construct composite scores of citizen satisfaction with local police services. More precisely, the paper advocates a custom made version of the popular Data Envelopment Analysis approach, also referred to as the “Benefit‐of‐the‐Doubt” model. The key advantage of this approach is that it weights the citizen satisfaction rates with the multiple local police functions and tasks into the composite score in an endogenous manner, thereby allowing for different values and interpretations of “good local policing” among police services. The methodology is illustrated with citizen satisfaction data on a sample of Belgian local police services.

The paper develops a multidimensional measure of local police effectiveness based on citizen satisfaction measures. It uses a non‐parametric evaluation methodology related to the popular DEA‐model. The paper looks for strengths and weaknesses in the performances of local police services both at the micro level (per local police service) and at the macro level (region).

With an average overall satisfaction score of 91.94 per cent, it seems safe to say that the majority of the citizens are generally satisfied with local police services. The BoD‐model identifies per local police service the basic functionalities that citizens rated relatively highly and poorly. Results show that urbanization per se does not drive the satisfaction scores of the participating local police services. Of much more importance are the regional disparities. Participating local police zones in Flanders receive higher satisfaction scores than those in the Walloon Region (the two big regions in Belgium). One of the findings is that the BoD‐model offers both conceptual and practical advantages in the evaluations of local police services. BoD grants each police service the benefit‐of‐the‐doubt in the effectiveness evaluations. The BoD‐model also identifies the factors of strength and weakness that explain the citizen satisfaction scores.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that multidimensional scores of citizen satisfaction are used in the effectiveness evaluations of local police services. The paper uses a methodology that accounts for the own particular circumstances of the local police services (by assigning in an endogenous manner weights in the evaluations).

Neo‐liberal policies have had a profound effect on the organization of policing in Canada by rationalizing provincial and federal initiatives that off‐load policing costs to municipal and regional councils. This paper aims to comparatively analyze the effect of these initiatives on service delivery for regional versus non‐regional police services.

Four measures were used to assess efficiency: per capita cost, cost per criminal code offence, number of officers per 100,000 population, and number of support staff per 100,000 population. Three measures were used to assess effectiveness: violent crime clearance rate, property crime clearance rate, and total criminal code clearance rate.

Analysis of the data reveals that, despite claims surrounding regionalization, regional police services are not demonstrably any more effective or efficient than non‐regional services.

Utilizes official crime data and police expenditure statistics. A national survey of police service delivery and citizen satisfaction is needed. Practical implications – These results can inform municipal and town council decisions about regional (or provincial contract) versus local police service provision. Originality/value – The first comprehensive comparative Canadian study on the efficiency and effectiveness of police regionalization. The article empirically challenges the purported relative effectiveness and efficiency of larger regional police services versus smaller non‐regional services in Canada.

The touted benefits of inter-governmental contracting are cost savings and simplicity when compared to shared service agreements. Some managers and public officials resist contracting given the assumption that there may be a drop-off in service quality. However, inter-governmental contracting introduces market forces which theoretically would improve performance while keeping costs per unit of output low (Boyne, 1998). This paperexamines municipal police contracting in the State of New Jersey, the purpose of which is to determine if there are statistically significant differences in non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force versus those that contract with neighboring municipalities for police services. Contracting costs are also explored. While summary statistics indicate lower non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force compared to those that contract for police services, multiple regression results indicate that contracting does not predict higher non-violent crime rates at the .05 level. Therefore, contracting for police services should be explored as an alternative municipal policing model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of the SERVQUAL approach to assess the quality of service of Strathclyde Police in Scotland. Measuring service quality in public services is fraught with difficulty – especially in public services where customers are vulnerable citizens whose contact with the service may be limited.

The paper reports on a SERVQUAL survey of elected representatives serving the area covered by Strathclyde Police Force. The survey captures respondents' expectations of an excellent police service and compares these with their perceptions of the service delivered by Strathclyde Police. The paper also reports on a parallel SERVQUAL survey of police officers in Strathclyde to examine how well the force understands its customers' expectations and how well its internal processes support the delivery of top quality policing services.

While there is a significant shortfall in meeting customer expectations, the police force appears to have a good understanding of what these expectations actually are. There also appear to be gaps in the formalisation of service quality standards, in the force's ability to meet established standards, and in its ability to deliver the level of service it promises to customers.

A key technical result is that the primary SERVQUAL instrument appears to be internally consistent but lacks discriminatory validity between the five SERVQUAL dimensions in this service arena.

The paper will be of interest to strategic and operational police service managers and to academics investigating the reliability and value of service quality assessment tools.

The paper reports an original application of the SERVQUAL approach to police services.

The themes of accessibility and accountability have come to dominate the police reform agenda in the UK. They are evident, especially, in the rhetoric of ‘neighbourhood policing’, which has been delivered across England and Wales, and in the ‘policing pledge’, which sets out a series of commitments regarding what the public can expect from their local police service. This paper is concerned with exploring these themes and their application in neighbourhood policing. It examines how officers in two police services have sought to implement the requirements of neighbourhood policing and the policing pledge in terms of improving accessibility and accountability of local policing. In doing so, it focuses on arrangements for consulting with members of the public, providing updates regarding their actions and outcomes in addressing local problems and on the provision of data and maps about crime problems. Practice implications are identified.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which police services are set up to deal with hate crime against people with learning disabilities; looking at infrastructure, policies, procedures and levels of awareness and understanding.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 14 police services in England. Key documents submitted by the police services were reviewed, and a focus group with eight people with learning disabilities was conducted.

Many police services are committed to tackling hate crime against people with learning disabilities. A wide variety of individuals have responsibility for dealing with hate crime and accountability structures are often unclear. Many services do not have hate crime policies that deal specifically with people with learning disabilities, or even disabled people in general. More training is required to ensure relevant staff are equipped to deal with the issues. Hate crime statistics are regarded as unreliable due to significant under‐reporting, although a few services have implemented innovative interventions to encourage reporting through awareness‐raising and multi‐agency working.

The Coalition Government has called for greater efforts at combating disability hate crime. It is widely acknowledged that the police are still failing disabled victims and witnesses. This paper identifies specific areas for improvement as well as innovative and effective practice that should be shared more widely.

The purpose of this study is to develop the theorisation of cybercrime in the context of the pandemic, and to sketch out a vision of how law enforcement might respond to a transformed landscape of online crime and offending.

This conceptual paper draws on empirical evidence from a range of sources (including official statistics) and the existing research literature, and revisits routine activities theory to illuminate the way that cybercrime patterns are being transformed by the pandemic.

The pandemic is reshaping the routine activities of societies en masse, leading to changes in the ecology of risk and opportunity for cybercrime. There is evidence of a large increase in the prevalence of cybercrime as a result, yet much of this has a paradoxically “local” character.

The authors identify specific practical implications for law enforcement, namely, that the role of local police in policing cybercrime should be re-envisioned, with a democratic, community-oriented approach at its heart.

The theoretical perspective outlined is a novel and critical development of a well-established framework, opening up new paths to the theorisation of cybercrime and cybercrime policing. The authors’ suggestions for practitioners have the potential for direct impact, both at the level of practice and in terms of broader imaginaries and organisation of police and policing.

Political reforms call for new types of public-private or community partnerships, in which public services are shaped in collaboration with networks of public, business or non-governmental organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how municipal partners justify and thereby maintain partnerships with the police.

The empirical material comprises documents and 26 semi-structured interviews with civil servants, politicians, and police staff. This qualitative study investigates three Swedish municipalities engaged in partnerships with the same police authority.

Based on Boltanski and Thévenot’s order of worth, the paper describes how municipal partners manage two partly contradictory arrangements; one constituted by industrial and civic logics, and one constituted by domestic and industrial logics. Guided by these two different arrangements, they justify and thereby maintain their partnership with the police by alternating between a compromising strategy promoting adaptation to the police and a compensating strategy stating that they are independent partners with demands on the police.

This is a qualitative study that needs further confirmation before general conclusions can be drawn. Still, it suggests that partners justify themselves by making claims on being both collaborative and independent within these partnerships.

Unlike research investigating how authorities initiate partnerships to organize integrated and cost-efficient public services, the paper highlights how partners justify their participation by alternating between two rather different but linked justifying strategies. The study applies a justificatory logic perspective that helps us understand that complex and sometimes contradictory arrangements of logics, which could threaten partner participation, also enable them to justify and thereby maintain their partnership with the police. Unlike institutional studies describing how tensions challenge organizational legitimacy this study describes how justificatory strains remain even when partners are able to justify their participation.

Social media is an integral part of modern society and is used by billions of people worldwide. In a policing context, police services are starting to use social media platforms to interact with their communities. However, academic literature is lagging regarding the effectiveness of police use of social media. The purpose of this study is to gather public perceptions regarding the police’s use of social media particularly the use of Facebook.

The study administered a cross sectional survey recruiting participants who are policed by one of the larger police services in England and Wales. A total of 294 respondents completed the survey providing their views on their police service’s use of social media.

The results of the present study provide overwhelming support for the police’s use of social media by the public, with most respondents actively following their local police service’s social media accounts. The study additionally provides a number of important findings in relation to the preferences of the public with regards to their police service’s use of Facebook.

The findings presented here provide police services with an insight into how to implement an evidenced-based approach to their social media activity.

The present study takes an alternative approach to understanding the effectiveness of police social media use by simply asking residents, an approach not used in this area of policing research to date.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of the characteristics of Indian reservation police agencies at the start of the twenty‐first century.

The paper uses national data on tribal police agencies from the 2000 Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies and from the 2002 Census of Tribal Justice Agencies (both conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics).

The analysis presented documents both common and distinctive trends in Indian Country policing, and compares tribal police agencies on reservations with non‐Indian police organizations generally.

The paper provides an empirical reference point for assessing future changes and developments in this mostly undocumented form of US policing.