Performance measurement and management in Portuguese law enforcement

Performance measurement of police services is complicated by ambiguous and complex goal- and objectives-setting, and by the difficulties of measuring outputs. This article looks at the organizational and management changes being made in Portuguese police forces. The authors fill a gap in the literature on performance measurement in Portugal by taking a national approach to the study of how law enforcement agencies are introducing new management accounting changes. The article therefore widens the debate on performance measurement and performance improvements in law enforcement.

Legal Uncertainty, Competition Law Enforcement Procedures and Optimal Penalties

In this paper we make three contributions to the literature on optimal Competition Law enforcement procedures. The first (which is of general interest beyond competition policy) is to clarify the concept of “legal uncertainty”, relating it to ideas in the literature on Law and Economics, but formalising the concept through various information structures which specify the probability that each firm attaches – at the time it takes an action – to the possibility of its being deemed anti-competitive were it to be investigated by a Competition Authority. We show that the existence of Type I and Type II decision errors by competition authorities is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of legal uncertainty, and that information structures with legal uncertainty can generate higher welfare than information structures with legal certainty – a result echoing a similar finding obtained in a completely different context and under different assumptions in earlier Law and Economics literature (Kaplow and Shavell, 1992). Our second contribution is to revisit and significantly generalise the analysis in our previous paper, Katsoulacos and Ulph (2009), involving a welfare comparison of Per Se and Effects- Based legal standards. In that analysis we considered just a single information structure under an Effects-Based standard and also penalties were exogenously fixed. Here we allow for (a) different information structures under an Effects-Based standard and (b) endogenous penalties. We obtain two main results: (i) considering all information structures a Per Se standard is never better than an Effects-Based standard; (ii) optimal penalties may be higher when there is legal uncertainty than when there is no legal uncertainty.

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, Agency Performance Plan

Annual Report

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Annual Report, 2002

Annual Report for the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy.

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, June 30, 2002

State Agency Audit Report

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2003

Annual Report of Law Enforcement Training Programs

Law Enforcement Academy Annual Report, 2003

FY 2003 Annual Report

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, June 30, 2003

State Agency Audit Report

Investigation of A High-Speed Law Enforcement Pursuit involving Toledo Police Department and the Tama County Sheriff's Office, 2002

Investigative report produced by Iowa Citizens' Aide/Ombudsman

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Annual Report, 2004

Annual Report of the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy for FY 2004

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, June 30, 2004

State Agency Audit Report

Law Enforcement Academy Performance Report, FY 2004

Agency Performance Report

Report of Recommendations to the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, June 30, 2005

State Audit Reports

Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Annual Report, 2006

FY 2006 Annual report for the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy as directed by the Director E.A. "Penny" Westfall