New Zealand Police’s Policing Excellence and Prevention First Strategy: A New Approach to Police Service Delivery

Since the 1980s, the New Zealand Police have attempted to introduce a number of extensive change management programmes to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their core services: Project Blueprint, Policing 2000, Policing Excellence and Prevention First. The latest change management programmes ‘Policing Excellence and Prevention First’ arose from three circumstances that were placing pressure on the delivery of policing services: (1) the impact of the 2007 global financial crisis on public sector funding and budgets; (2) unsustainable increases in demand for police services and (3) the need for police to modernize, coupled with opportunities to lift productivity, for example through the better use of technology. The New Zealand Police’s operating environment had become increasingly complex in the decade prior to the 2007 global crisis. Crime, however, was declining, but the actual social cost of crime had been increasing. The New Zealand Government viewed the situation as unsustainable as the increasing costs were placing a heavy burden on the wider Justice Sector, with Justice Sector costs increasing 79% between 1999 and 2009. At the same time, there was an increasing demand for police services, which reflected the changes in social, demographic and economic conditions. In response to these pressures, the New Zealand Police identified a number of organizational improvement opportunities that could increase productivity and deliver efficient, sustainable services. These opportunities were developed and implemented under the two separate programmes called Policing Excellence and Prevention First. This chapter will describe and examine these programmes, and evaluate how successful they have been since their introduction in 2009–2010.