The cost of police services in Australia now exceeds $2,000 million per year. State and territory police departments are among the largest public sector agencies in their respective jurisdictions. Police expenditures have increased significantly over the past decade, both in actual and in constant dollars. As the cost of policing continues to rise, and as Australian governments experience an indefinite, if not permanent, fiscal crisis, Australian police executives will be called upon increasingly to justify their budgetary requests and to demonstrate that their resources are efficiently deployed.
This paper presents an overview of issues relating to the analysis of police performance in Australia. It was written in order to stimulate critical thinking in an area of public policy which tends to be the subject of emotional rather than rational discourse. Inevitably, generalisations made in the pages below will not apply uniformly to all of the police agencies in the Australian federal system.