KPIs and KRAs - 2

It has just been confirmed that one of the KRA's is the reduction of street crime by 20% by 2011.

Let's see how we can define the KRA - "To reduce street crime by 20% by 2011".
(a) 2011 is very clear, it will mean either 1st Jan 2011 or 31st Dec 2011. Either way, it is fine.
(b) To reduce street crime - doesn't sound like it is related to solving cases. So it probably means to prevent cases (which is the right thing to do in the first place). So we'll take it that it means that we intend to "prevent cases of street crime" (in quotes for a good reason that we'll discuss later).
(c) 20% a good number, but what is based on? Current rates for 2008(since 2009 rates are not available yet) or 2009 rates (forecast)? Either way seems ok too. At least it is a quantifiable number.

While (a) and (c) may not be too clear, at least it can be definitely easily. So we need to clarify (b) "reduce street crime". This can be achieve in a few ways:
(i) More passive policing - more patrols and police kiosks (which will be difficult given the limited budget and personnel)
(ii) More aggressive policing - checks on people loitering around with motorcycles (are we punishing the innocent 98% in the effort to find the 2%)?
(iii) Reduce possible victims - discourage people from being possible victims (do not go out at night, stay indoors as much as possible.)
(iv) Reduce reports - discourage reports of crime (tell the victim that it takes 3 days to complete the report, and a series of appearances in the station or courts if a culprit is caught)

My guess is that (iv) is the easiest (and possibly the preferred) manner to meet the "reduction in street crime by 20%" KRA. Isn't is easier to reduce the reports by 20%, rather than to prevent 20% of the crimes? Slowly and surely, we'll have zero street crimes because none of it will be reported. And that is very bad. So how should it be done?

To have this KRA implemented effectively, the police must create a new department that is in charge of taking reports. This new department's KRA are the number of crimes reported and the feedback from the people reporting on their professionalism, knowledge, manners, and helpfulness in handling a report. This new department should report directly to the CEO equivalent of the police and behave like a proper support or customer-care department. Why you may ask?

If you buy something (goods or services) and it didn't work, you would call the support/complaints/customer-care department. Isn't it?

Well, the police is the suppliers we (as tax-payers) pay to provide something called "security". And if this security works well, no one will be robbed/etc.

And if it didn't work well, I'll want to report it so that it can be rectified (crime to be solved). So isn't the department that accepts reports from victims very similar to the support/customer-care department?

Let's call them the custcare team and their KRA is to be helpful and polite, and the more reports they take, the better they look. Cool.

Then there should be a preventive policing department - They are the engineering team in the commercial world. Their objective is to make sure their (security) services are delivered well and no failures(crime) are reported. This team is to try and prevent crime, so the more effective they are, the less custcare will be needed.

And there is already the investigative team (repair and maintenance), that fixes the faulty items (crimes). They are measured on number of cases solved.

And the last team, prosecution. This does not really exists in the commercial sector (unless you count the CFO or COO who is jumping and screaming when there are too many cases of "goods returned" or customer complaints). This again should be a separate department who is measured by number of cases given to them and number of cases successfully prosecuted

hmmm... maybe we can learn something from the appliance makers. They believe that if their design, engineering and manufacturing is done well, there is little need for customer-care and repairs.

If engineering (preventive policing) team works well, then there is less crime reported. So less people needed in both cust-care(reports), repair(investigative) teams and prosecution teams.

People behave according to how they are measured. Be careful what you measure.