Does a complex environment affect police efficiency: an examination on municipal police in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Research on police organizations argues that the external environment in which they operate have a negative effect on their performance. We tested these assumptions on a sample of 1,634 municipal police forces in Mexico, We used a conditional order-m model to examine how the environment in which police operate affects their performance. Our results indicate that not all socioeconomic, demographic and institutional factors have a negative influence on police performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Police efficiency
• Mexico
• environmental factors
• conditional order-m

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C67
• C14
• C61

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Values of m should be such that the number of super-efficient observations begins to stabilize (Daraio and Simar 2007). Research indicates that the value of m should account for 10% of the super-efficient observations (Bonaccorsi, Daraio, and Simar 2006). Given our sample size, the value of m is about 160. Super-efficient observations are those that over-perform relative to their peers. In this case, super-efficient observations would be performing better than the average of the 160 (m value) observations they are benchmarked with.

² (1 = there is the presence of organized crime and 0 otherwise).

³ (1 = conservative, 2 = progressive or 3 = coalition).