Multicriteria ranking for the efficient and effective assessment of police departments

The nonparametric assessment of police efficiency and effectiveness is challenging due to the stochastic nature of criminal behavior and the subjective dependence on multiple decision criteria, leading to different prospects depending on the regulation, necessity, or organizational objective. There is a trade-off between sustainable efficiency and effectiveness in many police performance assessments, because many departments can be crime-specialized or cannot reproduce good results effectively on more severe or complex occurrences. This study aims to provide a noncompensatory ranking classification combining Conditional Frontier Analysis with the PROMETHEE II methodology for the multidimensional efficiency and effectiveness analysis of police. The results on Pernambuco (Brazil) Police departments offer interesting perspectives for public administrations concerning prioritizations of units based on the mitigation of resources and strategic objectives.