Police discretion, outsourcing, and performance management: 999 emergency calls in the Lincolnshire Police-G4S Strategic Partnership

Abstract This article explores police discretion and performance management in the Lincolnshire Police-G4S Strategic Partnership—a landmark £229 million outsourcing arrangement which ran from 2012 to 2022. Interpreting original qualitative and quantitative data relating to 999 emergency call handling through a structure-agency lens, it advances three key findings: (1) the local contract-based 999 performance management structure enabled some degree of police discretion, allowing police actors to turn-up performance metrics to maximize G4S service delivery and turn-down these metrics to accommodate public demand (this is termed ‘contractual police discretion’); (2) this structure also constrained police discretion, preventing police actors from responding to public need when their proposed solution necessitated a redrawing of the contract (this is termed ‘non-contractual police discretion’); and (3) to circumvent these constraints, police actors played their ultimate discretion card—exiting the contract altogether. These findings contribute to scholarship on discretion, outsourcing, and performance management and reveal some of the key successes and failures of the Lincolnshire Police-G4S Strategic Partnership.