Urban governance and police expenditures

Abstract

The problems of crime and the fear of crime in American cities constitute a major component of the ‘urban crisis’. The first objective of this research was to determine the extent to which several demographic and socioeconomic factors influenced both operating and capital police expenditures in the 383 largest cities. Before the impact of these potentially policy-relevant variables on spending could be measured, the effects of urban size had to be mathematically removed from actual police expenditures by means of a regression technique. This analysis revealed that urbanism, in addition to urban size, was an important determinant of police operating expenditures. When residual, size-free expenditures were broken down by political attributes of cities, ‘reformed cities’ (those possessing a city manager form of government, nonpartisan elections, councilmen elected at-large and the mayor elected from the council) were found to spend less for police protection, given their sizes. It also became clear that this economy was achieved at the expense of the capital (including equipment) budgets. If this economy was achieved without sacrificing the quality of police services, perhaps governmental variables, as well as ‘need’ variables, ought to be considered by agencies giving financial assistance to cities.