Measuring the Performance of Drug Law Enforcement

Being able to describe and explain program effectiveness and impacts is integral to modern policing. The primary tool for doing this-performance measurement-is the current mantra of modern public sector agencies around the world. This is because measuring performance is fundamental to effective programmanagement and has formed an important part of the wider public sector reformmovement over the past ten to fifteen years. Unsurprisingly, this general trend has seen the development of a number of important Australian and international initiatives in law enforcement performance measurement. These are described here. The paper then highlights and describes a model performance measurement framework for drug law enforcement agencies. This framework was developed in an attempt to redress some of the evident limitations of current systems available in Australia, although it is also suggested that potentially this could be adapted to settings beyond Australia.