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Police agencies are under pressure to improve their performance and provide outstanding services for the community. In response, academics and practitioners have called to adopt effective methods that help these agencies to achieve their goals. Studies reported that benchmarking has a role to improve organisational performance. However, poor evidence of using benchmarking within police agencies and very few studies examine the relationship between it and police performance. Motivated by this gap, this study aims to explore and examine this relationship under the mediating role of innovation culture.

A quantitative methodology was utilised in this study. Data used to examine the hypotheses were obtained from the departments and stations of the Dubai Police Force (DPF), and the population comprised head section officers. A total of 338 questionnaires were distributed to respondents, 252 of which were returned. The hypothesised relationships were tested with the data collected by SPSS and SmartPLS statistical software.

Findings clearly show that benchmarking is directly and indirectly associated with the organisational performance of the DPF through innovation culture. Results support the notion that innovation culture facilitates the implementation of proper benchmarking projects in the DPF, which positively affects different aspects of its performance.

This study includes several limitations. Specifically, the generalisability of the findings should be considered. The analysis applies only to the DPF in the UAE. Thus, investigating and analysing variables in different police agencies in the UAE or internationally would be valuable.

Several recommendations are provided in relation to the obtained results to assist managers and decision makers in the DPF and other police agencies. This study includes suggestions for improving police performance by establishing an innovation culture and adopting benchmarking practices.

Although several contributions indicated that benchmarking and innovation culture is a key determinant of success, the literature lacks empirical studies investigating this link in the police field. This study is the only one to date that examined this relationship in police services. Accordingly, this study seeks to bridge this gap and delivers empirical evidence and theoretical insight to better understand this relationship.

The purpose of this research paper is to describe quantitative methods that assist police administrators with evaluating current staffing and justifying to local governing bodies the size of the patrol workforce required to meet performance benchmarks.

A discrete-event simulation model is developed to analyze various staffing levels and alternative scheduling scenarios. Input distributions are based on computer-aided dispatch (CAD) data from an urban police department. The results can be used to estimate the size of the patrol force needed to meet performance objectives.

The simulation model produces an estimate of the number of officers required to staff the department in order to meet benchmark goals. The output also indicates when and where patrol officers need to be added and shows performance plateaus where staffing increases only marginally improve performance. Observations on the trade-offs between meeting budget (via staffing) and benchmark goals are also provided.

Assuming that the quality of CAD data is reliable, our model requires data for one year to generate the distributions needed for the simulation. The computation of staffing estimates requires a shift-relief factor, calculated by the department to account for times when officers cannot be scheduled.

This study suggests that the department should hire additional patrol officers or increase overtime hours in order to meet performance benchmarks.

In contrast to previous modeling approaches, our simulation does not rely on the assumption that the policing system is static or in a steady state.

The aim of the present study is to examine, in detail, the magnitude and profile of police turnover across Australasia.

Sworn officer turnover statistics (total separations and voluntary resignations) for four financial years were collected from all Australian and New Zealand police jurisdictions. Comparisons were made with the Australian and international public sector. The age and years of service of resigning officers were also obtained.

Despite concerns about the high level of turnover, benchmarking data showed that total police turnover was lower than in other Australian public sector organizations and comparable with that in international public sector organizations. Voluntary resignations were also lower in policing than in the Australian public sector, but higher than in the international public sector. Further, resignations were the major form of turnover, and female officers resigned at a higher rate than male officers with a peak in the 25‐39‐year age bracket.

Although, over the last few years, turnover within Australasian police organizations has been low, the high proportion of resignations suggests that it is possible to achieve further reductions. This finding has an important implication for police agencies currently experiencing difficulty in maintaining sufficient numbers; namely, that the overall turnover rate in police organizations should be responsive to organizational initiatives. Police jurisdictions should therefore endeavor to investigate the causes of voluntary resignation to inform strategies to minimize avoidable turnover.

In addition to highlighting a variety of issues relevant to the consideration of turnover within policing, the present study obtained objective and reliable data to challenge the alleged problem of high turnover within Australasian policing. The benchmarking conducted here offers a detailed insight into the nature and extent of voluntary turnover within Australasian police organizations, and provides clear directions for future work in this area.

This study seeks to contribute to understanding of knowledge management and, specifically, knowledge sharing in the public sector through a case study‐based investigation of knowledge management policies and strategies, and knowledge‐sharing processes in four UK police forces.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with ten police officers in three police forces, and in the National Policing Improvement Agency. Questions focused on knowledge management strategy, strategies for encouraging staff to share and exchange knowledge, and any challenges in these areas. Interviews were recorded and transcripts created. A three‐stage thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken.

None of the case study organizations has an overarching knowledge management strategy or policy, although there is widespread recognition of the importance of intelligence and knowledge sharing to successful policing. The three police forces, supported by the National Policing Improvement Agency, do try to embody knowledge management in their strategies, processes and training methods, although it is sometimes difficult to identify relevant initiatives and practices. Forces are facing major issues in encouraging knowledge sharing as a result of the culture, the size of the force, and variable recognition of the value of knowledge management.

The study concurs with earlier work on research into knowledge management and knowledge sharing in the public sector that suggests that these processes are implicit and embedded in the culture of such organizations. This makes it challenging to “manage” knowledge in such contexts. The paper offers some insights into how knowledge is managed in the UK police force.

Black Canadians have a historically tenuous relationship with the police. Negative perceptions of the police held by Black people have traditionally resulted from high levels of police contact and perceived negative treatment during these encounters. Well-publicized instances of police violence involving Black civilians have also fostered hostility and mistrust of the police, often resulting in social unrest. Recently, in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of American police, people across Canada rallied in support of the Black Lives Matter social movement and calls to defund the police entered mainstream political consciousness. At the same time, police leaders have vehemently argued that racial bias within Canadian policing has been greatly reduced as the result of various reform efforts.

This paper explores the police racism debate in Canada through an analysis of three waves of survey data collected between 1994 and 2019.

Despite well-publicized reform efforts, the authors' findings demonstrate that little has changed over the past 25 years. Black people still report much higher rates of police stop and search activity than people from other racial backgrounds. Furthermore, racial disparities in negative police contact remain strongly significant after controlling for other theoretically relevant factors, including self-reported deviance and community crime levels. Finally, reflecting their negative experiences, most Black people still perceive Canadian law enforcement as racially biased. Nonetheless, the data do reveal one significant change: the proportion of white people who perceive police discrimination against Black people has increased dramatically over this same time period. The paper concludes by discussing the prospects of meaningful reform in light of the current findings.

This paper contributes to the literature on race and policing through an examination of 25 years of survey data across three waves of collection.

Policymakers have long suggested diversifying US police forces, which typically have white male majorities among officers. This article explores to what extent police diversity has changed over time in large agencies, as well as whether different diversity benchmarks may matter for agencies.

The authors draw data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey for 358 agencies that had at least 100 full-time sworn officers in 1997 and 2016 and that reported officer demographic data to the LEMAS in both years. For a selection of 12 communities – three randomly chosen in each of the four US Census regions – the authors compare officer diversity to Census data on population diversity for different benchmarks.

There has been some increase in diversity but policing largely remains a white male profession. The authors find only limited variation in diversity by type of benchmark – e.g. total population, working population or recruiting-age population – a community considers. This suggests communities may wish to choose a benchmark they can best measure and seek to increase diversity by it, and research on workforce representation may not be sensitive to benchmark choice. The authors also suggest communities and their police organizations consider other ways to assess diversity, including those that illustrate a broader range of attributes and representation throughout the organization, and that they research and test alternative forms of measurement to gauge whether these findings hold for different modeling approaches.

Our analysis is limited to the largest police agencies and to overall staffing level diversity metrics pertaining to sex, race and Hispanic origin. Still, we find many police agencies have room for greater diversity, which could draw more qualified workers and lead to better policing.

While there has been much attention to police diversity in recent decades, there have been few efforts to compare alternative measurement approaches. This research provides guidance to some initial measures, as well as further considerations communities may wish to make.

The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education in the UK focuses on maintaining, enhancing and standardising the quality of higher education. Of significant impact are the development of subject benchmark statements (SBS) by the QAA, which describe the type and content of study along with the academic standards expected of graduates in specific disciplines. Prior to 2022, the QAA did not have a SBS to which higher education policing programmes could be directly aligned.

Over 12-months, a SBS advisory group with representatives from higher education across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The College of Policing, QAA, Police Federation of England and Wales and policing, worked in partnership to harness their collective professional experience and knowledge to create the first UK SBS for policing. Post publication of the SBS, permission was sought and granted from both the College of Policing and QAA for members of the advisory group to reflect in an article on their experiences of collaborating and working in partnership to achieve the SBS.

There is great importance of creating a shared vision and mutual trust, developed through open facilitated discussions, with representatives championing their cause and developing a collaborative and partnership approach to completing the SBS.

A collaborative and partnership approach is essential in developing and recognising the academic discipline of policing. This necessarily requires the joint development of initiatives, one of which is the coming together of higher education institutions, PSRBs and practitioner groups to collaborate and design QAA benchmark statements.

The SBS advisory group has further driven forward the emergence of policing as a recognised academic discipline to benefit multiple stakeholders.

The SBS for policing is the first across the UK. The authors experiences can be used to assist others in their developments of similar subject specific benchmarking or academic quality standards.

Within the last 15 years, law enforcement agencies have increased their collection of data on vehicle stops. A variety of resource guides, research reports, and peer‐reviewed articles have outlined the methods used to collect these data and conduct analyses. This literature is spread across numerous publications and can be cumbersome to summarize for practical use by practitioners and academics. This article seeks to fill this gap by detailing the current best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis in state police agencies.

The article summarizes the data collection techniques used to assist in identifying racial/ethnic disparities in vehicle stops. Specifically, questions concerning why, when, how, and what data should be collected are addressed. The most common data analysis techniques for vehicle stops are offered, including an evaluation of common benchmarking techniques and their ability to measure at‐risk drivers. Vehicle stop outcome analyses are also discussed, including multivariate analyses and the outcome test. Within this summary, strengths and weaknesses of these techniques are explored.

In summarizing these approaches, a body of best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis is developed.

Racial profiling continues to be a contentious issue for law enforcement and the community. A considerable body of research has developed to assess the prevalence of racial profiling. This article offers social scientists and practitioners a comprehensive, succinct, peer‐reviewed summary of the best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between community type classifications and police strength. Prior research has examined other correlates, but no attempts have been made previously to examine the relationship between community type (as outlined and defined by Chinni and Gimpel, 2010) and police staffing levels.

Using a combination of NDLEA data on police strength, Uniform Crime Report data on crime, census data, and Chinni and Gimpel’s (2010) community classifications, this paper analyzes the relationship between a variety of correlates and police strength in 15,917 communities.

The study found that police staffing does differ by community type as well as by a variety of other key community characteristics.

This implies that further research on appropriate tools to determine appropriate staffing levels is needed.

This work indicates that traditional “peer benchmarking” approaches used to determine police strength should not be considered the best practice. Other approaches may be more appropriate and should be examined.

This is the first study to incorporate classifications of community type in the analysis of police strength.

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).