Police executives’ and managers’ perspectives on Compstat

Abstract

Developed and implemented by the New York City Police Department, Compstat is a managerial accountability system developed to identify and solve crime problems. It has been adopted police departments throughout the world. This manuscript compares the attitudes of police chiefs with those of other ranks of police administrators through the use of a survey conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum. We replicated the study and surveyed graduates of the Administrative Officer’s Course at the Southern Police Institute. The findings suggest that the views of PERF chiefs and AOC graduates are diverse and that some of the fundamental Compstat practices could be changed to better accomplish their purpose. While the AOC graduates were in agreement with the PERF chiefs with the basic principles of Compstat such as purpose, meeting formats, diagnosis of crime issues, and the operational responses, conflicting views were identified pertaining to communications, a demeaning atmosphere in the Compstat briefings, accountability, and a focus primarily aimed at short term solutions.