Читать книгу Police in America - Steven G. Brandl - Страница 99

The goals of police organizations are difficult to specify and even more difficult to achieve; therefore, it may also be difficult to determine what exactly constitutes good policing. The difficulty of adequately defining good policing has implications for all of police management. For example, if the goals of an organization are unclear, how does one determine who would best be able to accomplish those goals? And how does one determine good performance of employees?

When dealing with ambiguous and difficult-to-achieve goals, police departments have a tendency to focus on the means of reaching goals over the goals themselves or to substitute means for goals. As noted previously, this has been referred to as the means over ends syndrome.¹³ For instance, making arrests is often portrayed as a goal when in actuality it is probably best considered a means to a goal. The police often present the number of calls to which they respond as a measure of performance, although this statistic says nothing about the quality of services provided. For these reasons, ambiguous and difficult-to-achieve goals represent a major challenge in managing police departments.

A Question to Consider 3.1 The Means and Ends of Policing

Police departments are good at counting and tallying activities of officers. Some even keep track of the number of miles patrolled by officers during their work shifts, and this information becomes part of performance evaluations. How might this information be legitimately useful? How might it reflect the means over ends syndrome?