NCJ Number
208834
Date Published
2005
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This chapter critiques COMPSTAT, a police management tool that uses computer-generated statistics to provide quantitative measures of demands for police services and levels of police activity that can be disaggregated to the precinct level.
Abstract
For the purposes of this analysis, the author views COMPSTAT as a combined technical and managerial system that aims to develop internal accountability in a police department. The strategy for this critique of COMPSTAT is to view it as a particular kind of administrative innovation that can be treated as an independent variable whose effects on a police department and its work can be examined. After detailing the features and implementation of COMPSTAT, this chapter examines whether it is a new management tool, its strategic use, why its use spread so quickly among American police agencies, its attraction for police departments, whether it supports or suppresses innovation and learning in a department, whether it increases the capacity of the police to reduce crime, and whether reducing crime is necessarily the same as increasing the value of a police department for the community. The discussion focuses on the use of COMPSTAT by the New York City Police Department in a period touted by then-Police Commissioner Bratton as a key tool that led to reduced crime in the city. This chapter argues that COMPSTAT, as used by the NYPD, gave little attention to doing justice as well as reducing crime; did not focus on how police force and authority were being used; and was not used to monitor the legitimacy of the police with those who were being policed.