The economics of managerialism and the drive for efficiency in policing

The UK has recently proposed to develop a set of criteria whereby the economic analysis of police force efficiency is to be made standard. This follows a strategy of aiming for improvement through managerialism and best value performance indicators, similar to those implemented by US police forces after the Government Performance and Results Act 1993. In this paper we attempt to put this recent development of efficiency targeting into a UK historical|evolutionary context and provide one of the first attempts to use data envelopment analysis to analyse the allocative, as well as technical efficiency, of police forces in England and Wales. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.