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year-long internal survey conducted by the National Police has concluded that the West Java Police was the best performing provincial police branch among 31 nationwide.

The Papua Police, meanwhile, ranked as the worst.

The study, which was conducted in cooperation with the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry and other relevant institutions, gave the West Java Police a score of 6.767 out of 10 based on an analysis of documents and interviews with those inside and outside of the force. Coming in at second and third place were Banten Police and the Aceh Police, which scored 6.619, and 6.387, respectively.

At the bottom of the list was the Papua Police, with a score of only 4.782.

Provincial police branches were judged based on seven criteria; competence, response, behavior, transparency, effectiveness, fairness and accountability.

At the national level, the Traffic Police came out on top receiving a score of 6.71, with its lowest score in effectiveness balanced by the highest score in transparency.

Meanwhile, the force'€™s water police unit scored the worst out of all the work units within the National Police with 5.2.

The study also found that the law enforcement units, the National Police'€™s general crimes and special crimes unit, were underperforming with scores of 5.24 and 5.74 respectively.

According to police data, the general crimes unit nationwide had only successfully solved 56 percent of the 19,670 crimes reported throughout the year, while the special crimes unit only solved 32 percent of 4,329 cases reported.

The chief of the National Police'€™s general supervision inspectorate, Comr. Gen. Dwi Priyatno said that the survey had been part of the police force'€™s efforts to improve good governance.

'€œThere were two basic reasons [for launching the survey]. First, to prevent crimes: there should not be a lack of communication with local communities, to allow them to also monitor problems at hand. Second, we want to move toward a police force that is more humanist and also anti-corruption, anti-collusion and anti-nepotism,'€ he said on Tuesday.

Dwi said that apart from the Papua Police and the North Maluku Police, the performance of most of the other provincial police forces was average. '€œThis index will be a useful tool to make comparisons between provincial police forces objectively,'€ he said.

Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Yuddy Chrisnandi applauded the National Police for conducting the survey and publicly releasing the results.

'€œTo be brave enough to announce the governance index of each provincial police force, from many aspects, and not making it secret is an example of a good step and it should be followed by other government institutions that have relations with the public,'€ he said.

Yuddy explained that the most important factor was the level of satisfaction among members of the public, and this applied to all law enforcement institutions.

'€œSo if this kind of survey is to continue then I believe that the trust of the public toward the government'€™s efforts to enforce the law will increase. Eventually, the public'€™s perception of corrupt bureaucracy and unfair law enforcement could change in the future,'€ he said.