Thinking About Police Resources

Tony Barclay is a retired juvenile corrections probation officer and a
former public-health research associate at the University of Toronto.

This short book consists primarily of three papers that were delivered
at a 1992 conference concerning the allocation of resources to police.
Also included is a summary of the issues raised at the conference and a
useful bibliography.

Professor Bayley, who examines four jurisdictions (in Canada, the
United States, Britain, and Australia), offers telling statistics as
well as some interesting examples of an inflexible and stultifying
decision-making process; he shows that resource allocation has more to
do with tradition and police politics than with rational thinking.
Professor Murphy is no less critical, but his paper is more theoretical
in its emphasis and includes reflections on the nature of policing.
Mollie Weatherett, from the Police Foundation in London, England,
effectively demonstrates that a more centralized system of control, with
larger organizations, is no guarantee of improved decision-making.

This admirable introduction to the problem of resource allocation
should be required reading for chiefs of police, municipal politicians,
and anyone with an interest in the subject.