Performance and impact of municipal police forces: A case study of Mexico

This research examined the effects of exogenous factors on the efficiency of municipal police forces in Mexico and measured the impact of higher levels of efficiency on police societal outcomes. Recently, the Mexican government has invested heavily in strengthening the police force to try to curb high and persistent levels of violent crime. However, little research has examined whether police forces could achieve greater performance by being more efficient, and the extent to which vast economic, demographic, institutional, and social heterogeneity can hinder their performance. This research employed contingency theory to (1) study the effect of exogenous factors (contingencies) on police efficiency. The underlying premise is that police forces will underperform unless they can adapt to contingencies, and (2) examine the impact of higher efficiency on police societal outcomes, such as citizens’ perceptions of fear of crime, perceptions of police effectiveness, perceptions of crime as the main problem, and victimization. The analysis was done in three stages. First, the author employed frontier methodologies to estimate the efficiency of municipal police forces. Second, the author examined the effect of exogenous factors on efficiency levels. Third, using quasi-experimental methods, the author examined the impact of higher efficiency on police societal outcomes. The results indicated the presence of inefficiency in police forces, and the multivariate regression analyses suggested that five exogenous factors--income inequality, the size of the youth cohort, population density, unemployment and the intensity of organized crime--affected efficiency negatively. In addition, the impact analyses yielded positive impacts on citizens’ perceptions of safety, reductions in crime victimization, reductions in perceptions of crime being the main concern among citizens. Conversely, the analyses showed negligible impact on citizens’ trust in the police and in their perceptions of police effectiveness. This study demonstrated that municipal police performance in Mexico is affected by exogenous factors, and influences their efficiency to provide safety and security and combat violent crime. The research indicates that efficiency not only improves performance but it also has positive impacts on police societal outcomes. For policymakers, improving police efficiency can have positive spillover effects on constrained public sector budgetary allocations. For researchers, this study of efficiency contributes to a present gap in the scholarly research of critical public sector institutions like the police.