The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime-reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of police resources is disproportionately borne by Black and Hispanic individuals. Despite the complexity of this particular problem, the incentives facing both police departments and police officers tend to be structured as if the goals of policing were simple—to reduce crime by as much as possible. Formal data collection on the crime reducing-benefits of policing, and not the legitimacy costs, produce s further incentives to provide more engagement than may be efficient in any specific encounter, at both the officer and departmental level. There is currently little evidence as to what screening, training, or monitoring strategies are most effective at encouraging individual officers to balance the crime reducing benefits and legitimacy costs of their actions.

中文翻译：

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警务与公共安全经济学

任何警察行动的效率取决于其减少犯罪收益和合法性成本的相对幅度。在城市层面具有社会效率的警务策略在地方层面可能是有害的，因为减少受害的警察行动的直接成本和收益的分配与感觉安全的间接收益的分配不同。在美国，当地警察资源的不当分配不成比例地由黑人和西班牙裔个人承担。尽管这个特殊问题很复杂，但警察部门和警察所面临的激励措施往往是在结构上似乎警察的目标很简单——尽可能减少犯罪。关于警务减少犯罪收益的正式数据收集，而不是合法性成本，产生进一步的激励措施，以在官员和部门级别提供比在任何特定遭遇中可能有效的更多参与。目前几乎没有证据表明哪种筛选、培训或监控策略最有效地鼓励个别官员平衡减少犯罪的好处和他们行动的合法性成本。