Performance appraisal of Indian state police forces using ARAS method

In the light of recent excess of reported crimes in various states and union territories (UTs) of India, it becomes imperative to evaluate the police performance of different states/UTs in order to identify the poor/under-performing ones requiring immediate attention. Although, a limited amount of research work has been carried out in this area, mainly employing data envelopment analysis approach, a definitive ranking of Indian states/UTs with respect to their police performance has never been derived using any of the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques. Thus, the aim of this paper is focused on evaluating and ranking of all the Indian states/UTs with respect to their performance in minimizing criminal activities while employing additive ratio assessment (ARAS) method as a simplistic MCDM tool. It is revealed that Chandigarh evolves out as the best performer amongst all the 35 Indian states/UTs, while West Bengal comes out as the worst performer. A detailed analysis of the results is also carried out to identify those Indian states/UTs where substantial improvement can be brought in.