Assessing the impact of co-production on pathways to outcomes in public services: the case of policing and criminal justice

This paper focuses on how user and community co-production can improve the outcomes of public services such as policing and the criminal justice system. The paper develops a model of co-production pathways to public service outcomes, mapping the wide variety of connections between citizen co-production and the core activities in policing and criminal justice. This model demonstrates how co-production can be fitted into the classic public policy model linking interventions through problem prevention, detection, treatment, support for recovery and rehabilitation to higher quality of life outcomes. The paper then explores the empirical evidence from the literature for the impacts of each of the identified co-production pathways to outcomes. There is some evidence for almost all of the relationships modelled but there are clearly some serious limitations in the empirical research base. Finally, the paper provides a conceptual framework for exploring potential dysfunctional implications of co-production of policing and community justice, and summarizes the evidence for this 'dark side' of co-production.

Cite as: Loeffler, Elke and Bovaird, Tony (2020), Assessing the impact of co-production on pathways to outcomes in public services: the case of policing and criminal justice, International Public Management Journal, Vol. 2 (4): 205-223.

Access the full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2019.1668895