Cost-benefit dynamics of community policing on crime reduction in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigates the cost-benefit dynamics of community policing on crime reduction in Nigeria, employing an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) econometric framework. Utilizing annual time-series data, the empirical analysis evaluates the structural impact of three core community policing dimensions-Administrative and Operational Costs (AOC), Information/Intelligence Yield (IIY), and the Police-Community Collaboration Index (PCC)-on Reported Crime Incidents (RCI). Unit root testing via the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) procedure reveals a mixed integration structure comprising I(0) and I(1) series, thereby justifying the adoption of the ARDL bounds testing approach. The cointegration results confirm the existence of a stable, long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables, with the calculated F-statistic (6.7681) exceeding the upper critical bounds at the 1% significance level. The long-run static estimation indicates that Administrative and Operational Costs (−0.91), Information/Intelligence Yield (−0.64), and Police-Community Collaboration (−0.41) exert negative and statistically significant impacts on reported crime incidents, effectively suppressing criminal activity and alleviating the broader socio-economic burdens associated with insecurity. The short-run Error Correction Model (ECM) based on the optimal ARDL (2, 2, 0, 0) specification demonstrates a self-correcting adjustment speed of 13.55% per period, supported by an exceptional model fit (R² = 0.9660). A comprehensive battery of post-estimation diagnostics-including the Ramsey RESET test, Breusch-Godfrey serial correlation test, Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey heteroskedasticity test, CUSUM/CUSUMSQ parameter stability tests, and Jarque-Bera normality test-confirms that the model is econometrically robust, unbiased, and structurally stable. The study concludes that institutionalizing community-based policing provides a viable, cost-effective economic strategy for mitigating crime and recommends protected budgetary allocations, enhanced civilian intelligence networks, and deepened grassroots participation across Nigerian jurisdictions.