Citizen Involvement and Law Enforcement: Does Coproduction Affect Organizational Efficiency and Organizational Effectiveness?

• Main Author: Gultekin, Sebahattin
• Other Authors: Benavides, Abraham D.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Texas 2009
• Subjects: Citizen involvement; law enforcement; organizational effectiveness; organizational efficiency; Law enforcement > Citizen participation.; Public safety > Citizen participation.
• Online Access: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11039/

Citizen involvement in the production and delivery of public service has been a long time topic of interest and controversial debate among scholars. Essentially, the belief has been that if citizens are actively involved in the process, public organizations and communities benefit in numerous ways that will ultimately lead to increased citizen satisfaction. The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between citizen involvement in the production of public safety and security and its effects on organizational efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. To test the assumption that citizen involvement is positively correlated to organizational success and organizational efficiency of law enforcement agencies, a citizen involvement index was developed and used as the independent variable in ordinary least square regression (OLS) analysis. Three separate models are developed to measure the impact of citizen involvement on law enforcement. Findings obtained through bivariate and multivariate analyses indicate mixed results. Bivariate analysis revealed that citizen involvement was negatively correlated to organizational efficiency while no statistically significant correlation was found in multiple regressions. In addition, through bivariate analyses, citizen involvement was positively correlated with crime rates reported to city police departments, whereas multivariate regression analyses indicated that citizen involvement does not have a statistically significant impact on crime rates. Both analyses, however, provided support for the positive impact of citizen involvement on crime clearance rates. Finally, findings suggested that citizen involvement in public organizations and its effects on the production and delivery of public goods and services are overestimated from the perspective of law enforcement.