Replication Data for: Metrics Management and Bureaucratic Accountability: Evidence from Policing Article Swipe
YOU?
·
· 2020
· Open Access
·
· DOI: https://doi.org/10.7910/dvn/3e7jxb
· OA: W4398405994
Bureaucracies increasingly use quantitative measures to monitor personnel behavior. I develop a model of the incentives created by metrics management, a bureaucratic accountability technique, using policing as a case to show that monitoring can lead public-interest motivated bureaucrats to focus on work not in the public interest. Second, I develop a new measure of data manipulation in crime statistics: while theory predicts the presence of manipulation, researchers observe only the altered data. I solve this using the fact that police departments can reclassify rapes (but not other violent crimes) as "unfounded", concluding the reported crime did not occur. Finally, I test the effects of metrics management in policing using a novel data set. CompStat is associated with at least 3,500 additional minor arrests per city-year, substantial data manipulation, and no decrease in serious crime. These results have implications for bureaucracies implementing metrics management, scholarship using administrative data, and legal implementation.
