The Bush
Administration's budget for fiscal year 2004 recommends major
changes at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Among the
Administration's proposals is the elimination of the FY 2004 hiring
grants that are administered by the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS).[i] This is the second year
in a row that the Administration has made the request.[ii]
Congress should support
the President's recommendation regarding COPS funding because it is
supported by well-founded observations.
-
The COPS program did
not significantly advance the community policing movement, which
began several years before the creation of COPS.
-
The COPS program
misused taxpayer dollars by producing a self-serving evaluation of
its effectiveness and presenting the study as independent
research.
-
The COPS program did
not measured up to its goal adding 100,000 additional officers to
the street as promised.
-
The COPS program
failed to be an effective crime-reduction policy.
In a letter introducing
the Administration's FY 2004 budget, President Bush wrote that "We
will continue to focus on getting results from federal spending.A
federal program's measure of success is not its size, but the value
it delivers…If federal programs cannot show results, they
should be overhauled, or retired."[iii]
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 of over $10 billion in funding,[iv] 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[v] and reducing crime.[vi]
In 2001, the Heritage
Foundation Center for Data Analysis conducted an independent
analysis of the COPS program's effectiveness.[vii]
After accounting for yearly state and local law enforcement
expenditures and other socioeconomic factors, the analysis found
that COPS grants both for the hiring of additional police officers
and for redeployment (MORE, grants) had no statistically
significant effect on reducing the rates of violent 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. Further, COPS provides functions at the federal
level that rightfully lie within the jurisdiction of states and
localities.
[iv] The $10 billion
figure was obtained by summing appropriations designated for the
office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the fiscal year
1993 Police Hiring Supplement administered by the Office of Justice
Programs. See Public Laws 103-121, 103-317, 104-134, 104-208,
105-119, 105-277, 106-112, 106-553, and 107-77.The figure does not
include funding that is currently being spent for fiscal year
2003.
[v] Gareth Davis,
David B. Muhlhausen, Dexter Ingram, and Ralph Rector, "The Facts
About COPS: A Performance Overview of the Community Oriented
Policing Services Program," Heritage Foundation Center for Data
Analysis Report No. CDA00-10, September 25, 2000, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Crime/CDA00-10.cfm;
Christopher Koper, Jeffrey A. Roth, and Edward Maguire. "Putting
100,000 Officers on the Street: Progress as of 1998 and Preliminary
Projections Through 2003" in the National Evaluation of theCOPS
Program: Title I of the 1994 Crime Act. eds. Jeffrey A. Roth,
Joseph F. Ryan, Stephen J. Gaffigan, Christopher S. Koper, Mark H.
Moore, Janice A. Roehl, Calvin C. Johnson, Gretchen E. Moore, Ruth
M. White, Michael E. Buerger, Elizabeth A. Langston, and David
Thatcher(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of
Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, 2000), pp.
149-178.
[vii] David B.
Muhlhausen, "Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants Affect
Violent Crime Rates?".