The Provision of Police Services

Abstract

In the following chapters the discussion shifts away from modelling the supply of offences function to examine the economics of providing police services, especially those related to crime. In particular we ask questions such as: (i) what is the optimal level of police expenditure, (ii) what output(s) do the police produce, (iii) what relationship do these outputs bear to inputs of resources such as capital and labour, (iv) are police services subject to increasing, decreasing or constant returns to scale, and (v) is expenditure on policing cost-effective? Much of this discussion will be centred on the police service production function (Chapter 7) and the cost function (Chapter 8). Whilst there is a direct relationship between the two functions, it is convenient to treat the two sets of empirical studies separately. This is because (i) there has been relatively little recognition of the underlying relationship between them, (ii) there is a vast literature on the cost (or more precisely, expenditure) function, and (iii) the analysis of cost/expenditure studies separately enables us to consider a related issue, i.e. the demand for policing.