Police enforcement of traffic laws: a cost-benefit analysis.

A Cost-benefit Analysis 

Enforcement of traffic laws remains an essential component of traffic safety. Traffic laws serve many purposes - primarily to discourage unsafe driving and to remove from the roads those drivers who pose a hazard. By reducing such violations, fewer motor vehicle accidents may occur.

Effective traffic enforcement depends on the allocation of sufficient staff and resources. However, traffic duties must compete with other police tasks for funding because budgetary allocations often tilt toward property crimes and violent criminal activities. Additionally, the media attention to criminal activity commands public interest.

Police budget decisions often reflect the assumption that the public remains more concerned about intentional criminal acts than about the accidental property damage and injury resulting from motor vehicle collisions (i.e., the police should focus on catching the criminals rather than writing speeding tickets). Thus, it remains difficult for a police agency, with a finite budget, to assign resources to the prevention of motor vehicle violations.

This assumption, however, fails to take into account the fact that the amount of damage, pain, and suffering caused by traffic law violators involved in collisions far exceeds that of criminal acts. To a degree, the public has become accustomed to traffic collisions and accepts these losses as normal.

Furthermore, it seems that experts often do not take into account the relative costs and benefits of traffic versus criminal enforcement. Societal costs of traffic collisions are very high. A key consideration when discussing the cost/benefit of traffic law enforcement remains the fact that it generates revenue for a jurisdiction - whereas general crime enforcement usually does not.

Those administrators who make police work assignments often ignore the revenue implications of traffic law enforcement. Police agencies do not directly receive the revenues derived from such enforcement; instead, these proceeds typically are placed into the city's general fund account. A police chief easily can shift an officer from traffic to general duties with no impact on the police budget. However, a direct Joss of revenue to the city's general account would occur due to the loss of revenue generated from the tickets that the officer would have written. In many cases, the revenue from the tickets issued would have offset the costs associated with keeping this officer in the field. While the assignment shift has no effect on the police budget, it has the same negative effect on the general fund as hiring a new employee because of the loss of revenue from the citations.

An important empirical question arises concerning the amount of revenue generated by traffic enforcement. If the revenue from traffic citations received and retained by a jurisdiction equaled or exceeded that jurisdiction's cost of putting a traffic officer on the road, the issue of diverting resources from crime to traffic could become moot.

The Study

The authors conducted the study in Spokane, Washington. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission funded a full-time traffic officer dedicated to traffic law enforcement in one corridor of the city. With the assistance and cooperation of the Spokane Police Department and the Spokane Municipal Court, the authors used a system to track the citations from the individual officer to the municipal court in order to identify the citation revenue received by the court and retained by the city. Periodically, the police departments sent copies of the written citations to the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, where the authors entered information from these citations into a database. After 3 to 4 months, the authors sent a listing of citation numbers and driver's names from each batch of citations to the court. There, employees retrieved case dispositions, fine assessments, and fine payments from the court record system for a 1-year period and entered these items on the citation listing. The authors then entered these data into their database and further analyzed the information to determine the revenue received by the city.

The Results

The data obtained for this research project showed a total of 1,055 citations issued for the time period of July 1995 through June 1996. In 47 (4.5 percent) of the cases, no fines were assessed because the courts either dismissed the citation or found the driver not guilty. The remaining 1,008 citations were assessed an average of $100.30 in penalty fines, totaling $101,107. At the time the authors examined the court records, the court had received $66,022 in fine revenues leaving $35,085 of the total assessments outstanding. The average amount of revenue received per citation written was $62,58, based on all citations, including those that the courts dismissed or of which they found the defendant not guilty.

Washington State splits the traffic fines and forfeitures three ways. it allocates the first $10 of every citation to the state administrator for the courts. The local jurisdiction retains 52 percent of the balance, and the State Public Safety and Education Account receives the remaining 48 percent. Using this distribution formula, the city of Spokane yielded a total of $29,089,84 in revenue during the 1-year study period.

Additional revenue likely was received after the time that the authors examined the court records because of time payments being made by the drivers or through collections. Many of the court records indicated that the driver had made partial payment of the total amount assessed.

The authors believe that the citation data analyzed for this study represent a substantial underestimation of the actual productivity of this traffic officer. Problems with incomplete reporting of activity appeal to be the major distortion to the data.

Discussions with supervisory personnel from the Spokane Police Department, as well as other experts, indicate that the minimum expected productivity of a traffic officer is 10 citations per work shift, regardless of other duties, such as responding to emergencies, testifying in court, conducting crash investigations, or providing motorist assistance. Police managers report that common daily production averages are between 12 and 15 citations.

The authors estimate that officers work approximately 230 days per year (adjusting for holidays, vacation leave, sick leave, and training days); thus, the 1,055 citations issued during the 1-year study represent an average productivity of 4.6 citations per day. The reasons for this low productivity level remain unclear. The Spokane Police Department believes that many of the citations issued during the course of this project may not have been copied and forwarded to the study investigators due to administrative oversights.

The authors estimated, from the resulting study data, the revenue generated by a traffic enforcement officer who attained minimal productivity. A workload output of 10 citations per day at an average of $62.58 revenue per citation issued and 230 work days yields a total annual revenue of $143,934. Using the established formula, $62,885.68 would be the amount retained by a city in Washington state. This amount may vary depending on the different types of traffic violations issued by individual officers.

In addition to the method used by the authors in this study, another approach can be used to estimate the average revenue productivity of an individual traffic officer. For example, analysts can take the gross income to a municipal court from traffic tickets, reduce that by the amount forwarded to others, and divide the remaining value by the number of citations issued. This provides an average income (per ticket) that administrators can apply to known or predicted productivity numbers for individual officers.

In addition to the statistics produced, this research project also revealed several tangible benefits that may accrue from having a traffic officer on patrol. These include the general crime deterrence value of extra police visibility in a community. Additionally, in larger cities, most general patrol officers remain tied up handling calls for service. Traffic officers, on the other hand, usually can drop what they are doing and respond immediately to emergencies.

Also, in many cities, police staffing is set to handle the average workload of calls for service. In a crisis, major emergency, or even during a large special event, police often cannot handle the additional workload. Administrators must bring in extra officers from other jurisdictions or pay their officers overtime.

Conclusions

This study revealed that the revenue produced by a traffic enforcement officer exceeds the cost of putting an officer on the road. Although costs certainly vary among different jurisdictions and the salaries of individual officers, the authors estimate that the cost for an individual officer in Spokane was $57,000, including the components of salary, benefits, equipment, vehicle, and support services. The authors estimate that this cost could range from $50,000 to $70,000 per year, which compares favorably with the estimated revenue of $63,000 that the jurisdiction would retain.

As shown, costs and revenues roughly balance each other, and traffic enforcement essentially pays for itself. Thus, city policy makers facing me budgetary issue of diverting police resources from traffic law enforcement to crime should carefully examine the revenue considerations, including other minor costs not mentioned, such as additional court caseload.

The presence of personnel dedicated to traffic law enforcement provides many intangible benefits to a city. These personnel act as an on-duty reserve, become instantly available, remain self-funding, and provide extra support during emergencies. Police administrators should consider traffic law enforcement as an effective use of police resources that contributes to public safety at no additional cost.

Mr. Moffat, a retired captain from the Seattle Police Department, currently serves as the director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission in Olympia. Dr. Salzberg serves as the research director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission in Olympia.