A DYNAMIC PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT APPROACH TO FOSTER MUNICIPAL POLICE STRATEGIES IN PALERMO TO CONTAIN SPEEDING AND DRUNK DRIVING

摘要

Road related fatalities kill 1,25 million people every year around the world and rank as the ninth cause of death according to some recent statistics by the WHO. Actions to reduce this phenomenon have been taken, at different institutional levels, with promising results, particularly in western societies, where the magnitude of such occurrences has been almost halved in the last decade. Nevertheless the level of attention, with regard to road safety, will have to be kept high if a further reduction of this phenomenon is to be reached. Traditional road safety-related approaches mainly focus on prevention through the constant improvement of vehicles’ safety devices and the rationalization of the road infrastructure. Surely such technical improvements have contributed to the reduction of fatalities among drivers but their impact on other categories of road users has proven to be far less effective. To protect pedestrians, cyclists, bikers and drivers themselves, in fact, other measures, focusing on behavioral approaches, are deemed just as necessary. In particular, certain driving conducts, like speeding and drunk driving, are constantly reported to be highly conducive to road accidents and therefore need to be drastically tackled. Consequently the attention should be cast on multiple factors that are believed to be at the root of such phenomena. In particular it is believed that traffic psychology should be relied upon as just as an important element to for road safety initiatives. Police work, in particular, could be effective in discouraging those behavioral attitudes of widespread disregard for driving rules. In particular, targeting the feeling of likely impunity, that is still high among motorists, could be a strategical move in police action provided that a certain regularity is exercised in the implementation of control activities. But, in Italy, this is unfortunately a difficult goal to achieve given the chronical understaffing that affects Police agencies at all levels and in particular at metropolitan level. Especially at local level, where most of the Highway Code infringements occur, the limitation of staff can be a serious obstacle to exercising regular police controls. Technological solutions have, therefore, been urged as a possible remedy to guarantee a more effective and capillary territorial control to complement the traditional Police work. While acknowledging the added value that speed enforcement tools could mean to the Police some questions remain open as to the best fit of alternative resources that could guarantee durable solutions in terms of sustainability. As it usually happens the true questions is not about the value of technology in itself but, rather, it is about the identification of a proper balance between alternative strategies that can guarantee service outcomes to the benefit of the whole community and not to just departmental own targets. Manifestly a need emerges to shift the focus from sectoral targets to more comprehensive approaches where global outcomes become the priority even at the cost of scarifying some sectoral targets. Police work has rarely embarked on such a course though; their traditional performance metrics are generally calibrated on sectoral output measurement than on service outcomes. A proper methodology should, on the contrary, be adopted to move from a micro analysis of performance to systemic evaluations without neglecting those dynamic implications so typical of complex systems. Combining traditional P&C solutions with a dynamic approach, in fact, enables decision-makers to detect all those aspects, looking perhaps marginal at first glance but realistically carrying a potential to alter scenarios and impact expectations severely. Dynamic Performance Management (DPM), in this respect, is a methodology that, through simulation, allows a more effective monitoring of wider scenarios while, simultaneously, enabling decision-makers to optimize limited resources in a sustainable way. Therefore, this thesis will propose DPM as a learning tool to guide the Municipal Police in the identification of a balanced combination of preventive and repressive activities and resources that can effectively improve their performance in reducing road accidents while guaranteeing an adequate financial flow from fines-generated revenues to be reinvested in road safety initiatives.