The Police Force Budget

The Police Force is key in ensuring security. Drawing from data up to the 2005, a few lessons can be learnt from the government’s budget allocation into the police force.

Decreasing share

Even though it seems we are spending more on policing, its share of the government budget has shrunk over the past few years.

Data from Budget Documents (Note: the drop in 2019/2020 is due to extra expenditure that the government had to undertake to help large parts of the economy.)

Cyclical investment

The data would suggest that investment in hardware and infrastructure seem to follow a cyclical pattern.

Peak spending in purchase of equipment and investment in infrastructure tends to happen during year 3 and 4 of a government mandate. That is possibly because of the time required for procurement procedures and for a new team to assess the need of the force. It could also be because of the PRB.

Finally, some figures that will give context to the two graphs above.

Since 2005/2006, the police budget has increased by 3.8 times while the government recurring budget has increased by 3.2 times.
The budget for salary of the police force has increased by 3.2 times
The salary of the CP has increased 2.4 times over the same period.