Notes de recherche. La gestion d'un territoire hétérogène : le cas des missions de police routière de la Traffic Branch du New South Wales Police Service

Because of its characteristics, the police organization represents a form of bureaucracy, which has to allocate its resources to reach objectives defined by the political authorities. The tools of economics are applied to the particular case of police organisations, especially for the traffic branch of the New South Wales Police Service. This article deals more accurately with a heterogeneous jurisdiction and the means available for the police organization to answer such a challenge. It seems that an economic process and probably an economic rationality play an important role for the choice of modalities of organisational adjustments. Our contribution rests upon a theoretical framework to circumscribe the consequences of such heterogeneity for the allocation of resources. This framework is used to understand the evolution of the New South Wales Police Service and especially the adjustments of its traffic branch to face up to such environmental evolutions.