Although civilian oversight has been introduced to make the police accountable to citizens and perform better, its effectiveness has not been thoroughly investigated yet. To better understand civilian oversight of the police, this study explores its theoretical basis as an accountability mechanism and suggests how it holds police agencies accountable even without direct disciplinary authority. The data from Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program, and the Fatal Encounters (FE) database are analyzed to estimate the effect of civilian oversight on police organizational performance, using a propensity score matching analysis. Among the dependent variables included in the analysis as performance indicators, civilian oversight turns out to have a significant influence only on police agencies’ clearance rates. The police agencies with civilian oversight have lower clearance rates by 2.71 percentage points on average compared to those without civilian oversight. The implications of civilian oversight's negative impact on police organizational performance are further discussed.

尽管引入了民事监督以使警察对公民负责并更好地执行，但其有效性尚未得到彻底调查。为了更好地理解文职人员对警察的监督，本研究探讨了其作为问责机制的理论基础，并提出了即使没有直接的纪律处分权，它如何让警察机构承担责任。分析来自执法管理和行政统计 (LEMAS) 调查、统一犯罪报告 (UCR) 计划和致命遭遇 (FE) 数据库的数据，以使用倾向得分匹配来估计民事监督对警察组织绩效的影响分析。在分析中作为绩效指标包含的因变量中，结果证明，民事监督只对警察机构的清除率有重大影响。与没有文职监督的警察机构相比，有文职监督的警察机构的清除率平均低 2.71 个百分点。文职监督对警察组织绩效的负面影响的影响将进一步讨论。