The
Bush Administration's budget for fiscal year 2003 proposed major
changes at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Among the
Administration's recommendations was elimination of the FY 2003
hiring grants that are administered by the Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
The
President's recommendation regarding COPS funding is supported by
three well-founded observations:
- As a Justice Department program, COPS is
taking on functions at a federal level that rightfully lie within
the jurisdiction of states and localities.
- The COPS program has not achieved its
goals and failed to pass an important performance test recommended
by President Bush in February 2002.
- Funding can be made available for crucial
new antiterrorism programs by shifting resources away from programs
such as COPS that have proved to be ineffective.
In a
letter introducing the Administration's FY 2003 budget, President
Bush wrote that "Where government programs are succeeding, their
efforts should be reinforced.... And when objective measures reveal
that government programs are not succeeding, those programs should
be reinvented, redirected, or retired." The use of performance measures is
vital to the Administration's efforts to determine which federal
programs are successful and which are not. Despite a sizeable monetary investment,
thorough and independent evaluations of the COPS program found that
it failed to achieve its primary goals of placing an additional
100,000 officers on the streets and reducing crime.
The
Administration's budget recommendation to cut funding for this
ineffective program is consistent with its goal of funding only
those federal programs that pass the evaluation test recommended by
President Bush. It now remains to be seen whether the
Administration will hold the line on its commitment to
outcome-based standards of evaluation by retargeting funds from the
COPS program and channeling them to more efficient and vital
projects.
The
Administration's commitment is currently being tested by Congress.
Specifically, the Providing Reliable Officers, Technology,
Education, Community Prosecutors, and Training in Our Neighborhood
Initiative (S. 924) would authorize an additional $6.9 billion for
an expanded COPS program while dropping a standing requirement that
grant recipients continue to employ COPS officers with their own
resources beyond the term of federal funding.
With
crucial funds at stake and a critical anti-terrorist campaign
needing support, the Administration cannot afford to continue to
provide billions of dollars for COPS hiring grants that have not
proven to be effective in reducing crime. The Office of Management
and Budget and the Department of Justice should join to give this
clear message to Congress, and the Administration should speak out
forcefully against the sorts of policies that are embodied in S.
924--policies that appear to be more an attempt to curry political
favor than to ensure the safety and security of American
citizens.
FLAWS IN THE COPS PROGRAM
Throughout the past seven years, the most
prominent federal crime-prevention initiative has been the
Community Oriented Policing Services program. This program gives
grants to state and local law enforcement agencies to increase the
number of police officers on the streets.
Federal funds, initially granted in
December 1993, were awarded with a goal of placing 100,000
additional officers on the streets by October 2000. Since the
program's inception, many local law enforcement agencies have used
their portion of the $10 billion that was appropriated to fund
officer salaries, computer technology, and clerical support.
Failure
to Meet Hiring Goals
To evaluate the effectiveness of the COPS program,
analysts in The Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis (CDA)
compared trends in the hiring of police officers from 1975 to 1993
to trends in the hiring of officers since COPS was initiated in
1994. The 2000 study found that COPS grants may have placed
approximately 40,000 additional officers on the street by 1998--a
number that was below the number that should have been on duty by
the end of that year if the program had been successful.
A
similar estimate appeared in the National Evaluation of the COPS
Program that was also released in 2000. This report, funded by the
COPS office and published by the Department of Justice, projected
that the number of officers COPS placed on the streets would, at
most, reach a maximum of approximately 57,000 in 2001.
Prior to the release of these studies, the
COPS office claimed that the program "funded" more than 100,000
officers--including officers who may or may not have been newly
hired or deployed.
However, research by The Heritage Foundation and others shows that
the COPS program failed to achieve its goal of actually placing
100,000 more officers on the streets to reduce crime.
Failure
to Reduce Crime
Analysis of the COPS grants found that crime fighting was
not a priority in the program's implementation. For example, the
law enforcement agencies that reported more than half of all U.S.
homicides in 1997 received less than one-third of the COPS funding
from 1993 to 1997.
In
2001, the Center for Data Analysis conducted another independent
analysis of the COPS program's effectiveness. This analysis looked
specifically at the impact of COPS grants on violent crime rates
from 1995 to 1998.
After accounting for state and local police expenditures and
socioeconomic factors on a yearly basis, the analysis found that
neither COPS grants for hiring additional police officers nor
grants for redeployment--Making Officer Redeployment Effective
(MORE) grants--had a statistically significant effect in reducing
the rates of violent crime, even though these grants are the major
components of the COPS program.
There are two possible explanations for
the ineffectiveness of COPS hiring and redeployment grants:
- The actual number of officers "added" to
the streets was substantially smaller than the level of funding
indicates, and
- Merely paying for operational expenses of
law enforcement agencies without a clear crime-fighting objective
is not effective in reducing the rate of violent crime.
In
many instances, COPS hiring and redeployment grants may have been
used for community policing in name only. Recipient agencies may
have done the paperwork to apply for grants without ever fully
implementing community policing techniques. For example, a DOJ
study found that partnerships established by COPS grantees with
their communities were often merely nominal and temporary. Although developing a
proactive crime-fighting strategy and working with the community
are extremely important in dealing with crime effectively, agencies
that applied for COPS hiring grants were not required to specify
how they would use the grants to reduce crime. Without accountability, the program
could become simply an exercise in disbursing grant funds rather
than a coordinated, focused campaign to reduce crime.
The
1997 DOJ review of crime-fighting programs acknowledged that
community policing with no clear strategy for targeting crime risk
factors is ineffective: "While the COPS Program language has
stressed a community policing approach, there is no evidence that
community policing per se reduces crime without a clear focus on a
crime risk-factor objective." Recent research demonstrates that when
police clearly identify problems, prioritize them, and address them
strategically, their efforts can reduce crime.
Proponents of the COPS program have argued
that providing state and local law enforcement agencies with
funding above what they would typically spend on operational
expenses is effective in fighting crime. Yet, as the CDA analysis
indicates, the major components of the COPS program--its hiring and
redeployment grants--have had no statistically measurable effect on
reducing violent crime rates at the county level.
Approximately six months after the
publication of The Heritage Foundation's COPS evaluation,
researchers at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Southwest
Texas State University published a federally funded evaluation of
COPS. This study
(hereinafter referred to as the Nebraska study) was financed
through two COPS office grants totaling over $156,000. The Nebraska study
found that, while redeployment grants failed to reduce crime, two
types of COPS grants--hiring grants and narrowly focused
grants--reduced crime rates in larger cities with populations over
10,000. However,
with regard to smaller cities (with populations between 1,000 and
10,000), the Nebraska study revealed that COPS grants were
correlated with higher crime rates--hiring grants with an increase
in violent crime and property crime, and redeployment grants with
an increase in property crime.
Claims of Effectiveness Based on Flawed
Research
Undeterred, supporters of the program have emphasized the Nebraska
study results regarding larger cities as evidence that COPS is
effective. However,
even this one area of reported program progress is highly
questionable, given that there are a number of significant
weaknesses in the Nebraska study's methodology. Although the study was sharply
critical of prior research that did not "control for extraneous
factors that may be correlated with both increases in the number of
police officers and increases in crime rates, such as local
politics, or fluctuation in the local economy of cities," Nebraska researchers
ignored important contributing factors in their own study. The
Nebraska study was based on data from 1990 and failed to take into
account many significant subsequent demographic changes that may
have influenced crime rates, such as fluctuations in minority and
youth populations.
Another highly questionable aspect of the
Nebraska study is its assumption that state and local law
enforcement efforts do not influence crime rates. In truth, state
and local governments are on the front line in efforts to fight
street crime, while the federal government plays only a small role.
During the 1994-1999 period, while the COPS program had a
nationwide budget of $6.9 billion, state and local governments
allocated more than $280 billion for police agencies. In other words, for
every $1 spent on COPS initiatives, over $40 was spent by state and
local governments for police protection.
In
contrast to the approach taken in the Nebraska study, The Heritage
Foundation used a statistical model that took into account state
and local investments in policing. In addition, the analysis used
county-level data that included more complete information on
government spending, as well as information on important
socioeconomic factors that is available on a yearly basis. The
Heritage Foundation study found that, while state and local police
expenditures had a significant impact on the incidence of crime,
the COPS program was largely ineffective.
IGNORING FAILURE: A QUEST FOR
REAUTHORIZATION
In
April 2002, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported S.
924, sponsored by Senators Joseph R. Biden (D-DE) and Arlen Specter
(R-PA). S. 924 would authorize spending an additional $6.9 billion
over six years to fund an expanded COPS program and eliminate the
current provision in law that recipients of COPS grants must
continue to employ COPS officers after federal funding is expended,
paying them out of their own resources.
This
change would occur because the bill requires that up to 50 percent
of the federal funds reserved for officer salaries be directed to
agencies whose original grants have expired--in essence creating a
new federal obligation to fund local officers' salaries. This is
tantamount to establishing a new federal entitlement for
localities. Clearly, such measures should be avoided. Policymakers
should recognize and act on their responsibility to identify and
promote effective policing activities rather than simply channeling
more taxpayers' money to a program that has failed to achieve its
goals.
WHAT THE ADMINISTRATION SHOULD DO
Since 1994, Congress has poured billions
of taxpayers' dollars into crime prevention programs the
effectiveness of which has never been demonstrated. With a
heightened awareness of the need to promote the safety and security
of the American people since the September 11 terrorist attacks,
crucial resources should be targeted to programs with proven
effectiveness. On no account should failed experiments be converted
into entitlements for the sake of currying political favor.
To
its credit, the Administration has recognized that an important
step in reforming DOJ programs is to eliminate the COPS hiring
grants. However, it remains to be seen whether the Administration
will stand strong in its determination to fund only effective and
efficient programs.
To
this end, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of
Justice must send a clear and unified message to Congress that
funds for the failed COPS program should be retargeted.
Regrettably, the approach embodied in S. 924 will not accomplish
this. The Administration should therefore break its silence and
speak out clearly against S. 924 and any such attempt by
congressional appropriators to maintain or increase funding for
COPS.
CONCLUSION
President Bush has committed himself to
funding only programs that work. His FY 2003 budget reflects this
commitment time and again. Now that the budget debate has shifted
to the appropriating committees of Congress, the President must
hold the line on his goal of retargeting the funds of programs
whose effectiveness has not been proven and or that have been
demonstrably ineffective.
Programs such as COPS are prime candidates
for reductions because they not only have failed to achieve their
goals, but also have assigned to the federal government functions
that fall within the expertise, jurisdiction, and constitutional
responsibilities of state and local governments. Clear leadership
and a unified message from the Administration are now necessary to
halt efforts within Congress to continue and even increase funding
for programs that have done little to ensure the safety and
security of the American people.
David B.
Muhlhausen is a senior policy analyst and Ralph Rector is project
manager and research fellow in the Center for Data Analysis at The
Heritage Foundation.