Difficult art of rewarding merit in the police

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has estimated that civil service reforms that include a bureaucracy that is merit-based rather than seniority-based, could add nearly a percentage point annually to India's per capita growth. However, the present system of performance appraisal for police officers has failed to energise the force and is ill suited for police departments' transformation towards citizen-centric functioning. Overall, the department's performance is a sum total of quality of service from individual officers. And all this is earned the hard way, hour by hour of tedious police work backed by sincere devotion to duty. The Committee on Police Training, 1971 observed that the existing systems of assessment and promotions are subjective and in some cases vitiated by extraneous influences, thus leaving room for merit going unrecognised and felt the need to introduce an objective system of assessment and promotions at the various levels of the police force.

 

The existing subjective system of assessment and promotions fails to motivate and tends to erode the confidence of police officers in the establishment, undermining department's efforts and harming public interests, as it encourages policemen to please the bosses rather than serve the public needs. It remains insulated from the modern shift in the basic philosophy from the use of annual confidential reports as a tool for disciplining the employees to treating them as a source of information for administrative purposes and for organisational development through improving the performance of the employees.

The National Police Commission (1977) recommended that the performance appraisal system in the police should be broadly classified into the following two areas : One, a continuous appraisal which is correctional and developmental in its impact and second, the annual Performance Appraisal Report which is for  organisational purposes in the matter of training, placements and promotions. In the opinion of the Commission it will not be difficult to introduce a system of continuous assessment in the police as the nature of police work does require even today continuous maintenance of records of the duties performed at various levels especially in the operational areas like the maintenance of beat book, case diary, personal diary, the general diary crime register, court register, etc. 

 

Community policing initiatives in the departments have also broadened the role of police officers from that of law enforcers to problem solvers, therefore, traditional processes designed to measure and evaluate the performance of officers as law enforcers are no longer adequate to measure the work done in the area of community policing. As the community policing emphasises problem solving and assisting citizens in addition to carrying out traditional law enforcement actions, it would be appropriate to incorporate more measures of performance such as leadership, creativity, public speaking ability, relations with co-workers, citizen satisfaction with officer contacts and contribution to the pursuit of teamwork. 

 

Thought could also be given to adopting a web-based performance appraisal system that is able to provide analysis data on daily basis. The implementation of a system which continuously measures performance on job-related parameters that form the basis for promotions, rewards and punishments and recommendations for medal cases, can enhance a sense of justice and equity in the department. 

Police station and district police in charge are the key positions at the cutting edge of policing. Selection process for these positions should allow a fair chance to everyone eligible, based on merit and not on extraneous influence. Drawing strength from the recognition of their merit and fair-play, only such officers would be able to display courage to stand up for what is right and will be more inclined to serve the public with  devotion, sensitivity and impartiality. In South Africa Police, important selection for the in charge of police stations and the districts are done on the basis of open process at the South African Police Service's Assessment Centre by a multi-method, multi-trait technique. 

 

However, there are a few things that may be kept in mind in evolving an appraisal system for policemen. Reliance only upon statistics may be particularly problematic in police work because the specifics of the process are often as important as the end result. It is very important to guard against perverse incentive, especially in the area like the figures of arrests made. As this would be one of the indicators of performance appraisal, there is danger that policemen may start affecting early arrests without proper verification during investigation. Officers that have high statistical outputs but infringe on civil rights or treat citizens rudely cannot be said to be performing well overall as in the process they are alienating citizens and damaging departmental credibility. Balanced scorecard method provides for all round perspective and can be a useful tool in creating parameters. It can be useful to involve the citizens in deciding on performance indicators for a department like police.

 

Also, it would be pertinent to mention that any system is as good as the utilization made of the system by the senior officers. The performance measurement outputs if sought, seen and acted on timely would have tremendous impact on the functioning of the force. On the other hand if the impression goes that the performance reports generated are not seen or the data collected is not analysed critically, the system can soon turn into one of the many redundant data-collection exercises carried out by the government agencies. 

 

A well-designed appraisal system can help the police departments ensure better control of supervisors, focus on performance variables, equity, continuous feedback, corrections and analysis. By communicating well-defined goals and objectively measuring the performance, the police departments can achieve extraordinary results, as the police force has always responded earnestly when treated with equity and dignity.