Budgetary support for police services in US municipalities: comparing political culture, socioeconomic characteristics and incrementalism as rival explanations for budget share allocation to police

Citation

Chou, M. (2010), "Budgetary support for police services in US municipalities: comparing political culture, socioeconomic characteristics and incrementalism as rival explanations for budget share allocation to police", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 33 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/pijpsm.2010.18133dab.001

Budgetary support for police services in US municipalities: comparing political culture, socioeconomic characteristics and incrementalism as rival explanations for budget share allocation to police

Article Type: Perspectives on policing From: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, Volume 33, Issue 4

Jihong Zhao, Ling Ren and Nicholas P. LovrichJournal of Criminal JusticeVol. 382010pp. 266-275

Public safety is considered an indispensable service and, in many cities, the police department receives a large portion of the overall municipal budget in order to keep the public safe However, the amount of resources designated to police services are not constant. These differences can be observed annually across and within cities. Research on the phenomena of dynamic allowance by municipalities focuses on two major aspects: the relationship between police expenditure and socio-economic conditions or crime rates. Despite strong interest in this area, Zhao et al. notes that empirical research on budgetary allocations made to city police departments are relatively rare and outdated. A review of the literature revealed that no cross-sectional studies had been conducted since the 1980s and longitudinal studies were nonexistent.

To that end, Zhao et al. attempted to fill the void in municipal expenditures on police literature by investigating two research questions. First, examining the data of 188 cities nationwide from 1993 to 2003, the authors investigated whether disparities existed in the budgetary allocations made to police departments. Second, the authors examined which of the prevailing approaches best explained the variation seen over a large span of time.

Extant literature proposes three competing approaches to explain the variation in distribution of municipal budgets among their many agencies. First, the local political culture approach argues that the prevailing political culture and type of government structure influences municipal budgetary decision-making. Second, the socioeconomic approach argues that a few key socioeconomic characteristics of a community, such as crime rates and size of minority population, largely shape the level of police spending. Lastly, the incremental approach argues that little debate occurs over the allocation of available resources, instead budgetary cuts and increases within all agencies closely parallels the economy.

A two-way random-effects model with a time and city specific component was employed to study the determinants of police budgetary allocations. In order to test the competing approaches, nine explanatory variables were included in the model to incorporate the key aspects of each approach. Of note are the variables used to assess the impact of the incremental approach; specifically, whether the degree of change is consistent across all municipal agencies. The authors looked at the expenditures of an essential (Fire Department) and nonessential (Department of Parks and Recreation) service in order to determine if certain agencies were more vulnerable to budget cuts during financial hardships.

Data for this study came from five distinct sources:

1. 1.

   Information on local government structure was collected from surveys conducted by the Division of Governmental Studies and Services.

2. 2.

   Financial information was obtained for each city through the US Census Bureau.

3. 3.

   Violent crime rates and police employment data were acquired through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.

4. 4.

   Unemployment rates were obtained from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

5. 5.

   Demographic information at the city level were gathered from US Census Reports.

The authors ran five step-wise models to determine the predictive power of each competing approach. The first model incorporated explanatory variables for the local political culture approach with subsequent models adding the explanatory variables for the socio-economic and then the incremental approach. Results indicated that in the full model, minority population, fire service expenditures, park/recreation service expenditures, percent males, and percent home owners all had significant positive correlations with allocated budget to the police department. Moreover, by comparing the adjusted R-squared value, the findings indicate that the incremental approach is the most powerful in explaining the variation in allotted municipal budget to police services over time. The local political culture variables were able to explain only 7 percent of the total variation. Addition of socio-economic variables increased the explanatory power of the model by 8 percent, while the inclusion of the incremental variables boosted the explanatory power by an additional 49 percent.

Within the incremental approach, three distinct models were run to test the vulnerability of essential vs nonessential agencies to budgetary cuts. First, budgetary shares for the fire service and Department of Parks and Recreation were run separately and then together in the third model. The full model with both services had an R-squared value of 0.64. Inclusion of only the fire service expenditures yielded a R-squared value of 0.63 while the inclusion of only parks and recreation service produced a R-squared value of 0.19. This finding suggests that the effectiveness of the incremental approach is somewhat greater when applied to agencies deemed essential by the municipality.

Zhao et al. caution that the findings in this study should be viewed as exploratory in nature, since it is the first study to test competing approaches on the determinants of municipal budgetary allotment for police services. What the results showed was that municipal budgetary decision-making is primarily incremental in nature, especially when applied to essential services. Additionally, the findings regarding minority and male populations were consistent with extant literature on police strength. Specifically, the presence of large minority or male populations are significant predictors of police strength, therefore, these departments are more likely to be allocated a larger portion of the annual budget. In conclusion, even though this study sheds light on municipal expenditures on police services, further examination is required to better understand this topic.

Michael ChouUniversity of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA