Agents and logics in community policing: the designing of performance measures

ABSTRACT

Community policing (CP) is a proactive approach to policing that relies on the involvement of community members. In this paper, we address relevant managerial issues pertaining to CP by resorting to the performance measurement construct, exploring the logics at play in CP and how they affect the design of CP performance measures. A longitudinal case study was conducted in a local police department in Italy. Findings reveal three logics, the co-existence of which creates a unification and temporal stratification of CP performance measures, thereby delivering theoretical and practical contributions to CP and public-management realms.

KEYWORDS:

• Community policing
• performance measurement
• institutional logics
• field-level logics
• local governments

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2023.2230989

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://www.acdvevents.it/.

2. Access via the following link: https://www.acdvevents.it/.

3. Legislative decree 27 October 2009, n.150.

4. As the paper was going through the review process, the Italian Legislator required the integration of the Performance Plan within a broader document. However, this step has not affected the production of documents during the period considered in the study.