Dragnet

It is much easier to measure efficiency in a factory than a bureaucracy. In a factory, it's a matter of input versus output; how much can be produced from how much material. In a government bureaucracy, it's not as straightforward. 

There is the tendency to rely on numbers to gauge  how effective something is. It's only natural. People like big numbers and charts with arrows pointing up. It works for private businesses for the simple reason that profit is easy to measure. It's different in government since nothing is constant and predictable.

It's better to give an example. In the courts, efficiency is measured in the number of cases disposed of per month. It makes sense. However, it does not take into account that it's not really up to the courts to decide how many cases get resolved in a month. Maybe the trial gets postponed. Maybe the parties decide to compromise. Maybe the compromise doesn't push through. The best you can do is make an estimate. This system isn't necessarily bad. One side effect though, is that some courts tend to hold off on promulgating decisions if the month has a sufficient amount in order to load it onto the next month's numbers. It produces minor delay but it shows that such a system can be gamed to make the reports look good.

The worst example of over-reliance on raw numbers is the travesty that is the "quota system" of the police. The police are given "quotas" by their superiors on how many arrests they should make per month. Right off the bat, one can see the problem with this system. How can you make a quota of how many arrests ought to be made per month? What is this based on? Are they implying they know with certainty how many crimes are committed in a given time and in a given area? Suppose that there's a lull in criminal activity, what then?

The problem with this quota system is that it encourages the police to arrest as many people as they can whenever they conduct a raid on a drug/gambling den. They call these raids "one time, big time" operations. I don't know why they call it "one time" as they do it many times but they're not kidding about the "big time" part. A lot of people get caught in these raids and a disturbing number of them are simply bystanders. It's like fishermen with a trawl net catching everything they can leaving destruction in their wake. The quota has to be met. Of course, the number of actual convictions isn't used as a measure of effectiveness, no, that's the prosecutor's problem. The police don't care. You could be dragged off to jail just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In their haste to arrest as many people as they can, the police also tend to make a lot of mistakes. Evidence is often lacking. Suspects have to wait in the filthy and overcrowded jails before their case gets called to trial. When the time comes to explain the arrest, the judge is going to know eventually when a suspect is a mere bystander who was just out to buy a pack of sugar. Outside of raids, you have people arrested without a proper warrant just by looking sufficiently suspicious. The irony is that nothing can kill a case faster than a wrongful arrest. In which instance, it is just a massive waste of time for everyone involved.

But we need to get those numbers up, don't we? How else would the brass know if these deadbeat cops are earning their pay?

There has to be a better way.