Australian Police Research Articles

A comparison of police processing reports for juvenile graffiti offenders: societal implications

This paper reports on a Western Australian Police database investigation into gender, age and offence type differences in the processing reports recorded for 1060 juvenile graffiti offenders. The findings reveal no significant differences exist in the processing reports recorded for male and female juvenile offenders. However, the recorded offences committed by 10–12 year old preteen offenders differ significantly from those of 13–14 year old early adolescent and 15–17 year old late adolescent offenders. In light of these differences, the possibility of affording greater processing discretionary powers to Police when dealing with preteen graffiti offenders is discussed.

Confidence in the police: Balancing public image with community safety – A comparative review of the literature

Examining the evolution of British and Australian policing, this comparative review of the literature considers the historical underpinnings of policing in these two countries and the impact of community legitimacy derived from the early concepts of policing by consent. Using the August 2011 disorder in Britain as a lens, this paper considers whether, in striving to maintain community confidence, undue emphasis is placed on the police's public image at the expense of community safety. Examining the path of policing reform, the impact of bureaucracy on policing and the evolving debate surrounding police performance, this review suggests that, while largely delivering on the ideal of an ethical and strong police force, a preoccupation with self-image may in fact result in tarnishing the very thing British and Australian police forces strive to achieve – their standing with the public. This paper advocates for a more realistic goal of gaining public respect rather than affection in order to achieve the difficult balance between maintaining trust and respect as an approachable, ethical entity providing firm, confident policing in this ever-evolving, modern society.

Force to sell: policing the image and manufacturing public confidence

In recent years, policing organisations have become increasingly savvy at producing positive images of police work through both the old and new media via the growth in professionalised police public relations (PR) infrastructure. This image work comes as a response to a number of modern policing and political challenges such as the public fear of crime, a range of police reform agendas, the perceived crisis in policing consent and the withering of ‘old media’ such as newspapers and a proliferation of new media, social media and citizen journalism. With a growing body of international research pointing to the need for policing organisations to foster public confidence and organisational legitimacy through the practice of procedural and distributive justice, much less research has looked at public confidence in the context of police media work. Based on original qualitative data,1 which includes interviews with key uniformed and civilian directors of PR branches in Australian police organisations, this article constitutes a comparative case study and explores how media and PR directors within Australian police organisations conceive of the links between their ‘image work’, public confidence in the organisation, trust in policing and legitimacy in the police institution. We investigate both the discourses and practices of public confidence raising amongst a number of elite police PR managers.

Officers’ perspectives of policing alcohol-related incidents in and around licensed premises

Alcohol-related harms are disproportionately represented in licensed premises. This study aimed to investigate the practices and perceived capabilities of a group of police officers who engage in policing activities in and around licensed premises in a capital city policing district in an Australian jurisdiction. Analysis of the self-reported data revealed that the 254 participants were much more likely to attend to alcohol-related incidents outside rather than inside licensed premises. Policing licensed premises that involved an alcohol-related event was perceived as the most difficult task compared to other forms of police activities, which was mirrored by low levels of perceived knowledge regarding effective intervention strategies to deal with incidents inside licensed premises. The findings have direct implication in regards to training police officers, particularly increasing their perceived knowledge and skill level to deal with incidents inside licensed premises. The views expressed in this journal article are those of the authors and in no way represent those of the any Australian policing agency.

Improving Police Officers’ Perceptions of Sexual Offending Through Intensive Training

We examined whether specialist police training on the dynamics of sexual offending can modify officers’ victim-blaming attitudes and negative perceptions regarding likely case authorization. The sample included 77 Australian police officers specialising in sexual assault investigation. The training, delivered face to face over 4 weeks, included focus on identifying elements of grooming in offending relationships and how these elements can be elicited from victims and suspects within a narrative interviewing framework. Officers’ perceptions of cases were assessed immediately pre- and posttraining using a series of case scenarios. For each scenario, officers rated (on a 10-point Likert-type scale) their confidence that the case should be authorised to proceed to prosecution and the responsibility attributable to the victim. For each case, officers also listed up to 5 factors to justify their case authorization decision. Overall, confidence in case authorization increased from pre- to posttraining, whilst perception of victim “responsibility” decreased. The pattern of results, including the qualitative evidence to justify officers’ decisions, support that the attitude change was due to greater understanding of the dynamics of sexual offending. The implications for police trainers, and directions for future research, are discussed.

Australian police officers' perceptions of sex offender registries

Sex offender registration schemes exist in most English speaking countries to assist police in the investigation of new crimes and to deter known offenders. To date, however, very little research has examined the efficacy of these registers. This study addresses this issue by providing the first qualitative analysis of police officers' perceptions of registration schemes. Twenty-four Australian police professionals (whose jobs were primarily associated with the operation of sex offender registration schemes) participated in focus groups in groups of 2–5 officers. Officers were recruited across three jurisdictions where quite distinct registration schemes operated. They were asked to reflect on how their register operates, how effective and efficient it is, the challenges faced in its administration and how the registry process might be improved. The key challenges addressed included; limitations in risk assessment expertise, restriction in legislative powers, and inadequate opportunity for specialisation. The implications for current practice are discussed.

The Western Australian Police Headquarters Building: Surveillance, Power and the Authoritarian State

There has been little cultural studies work concerned with Perth’s built environment. This contribution examines a building that has been a focus in the distribution of governmental power across Perth and Western Australia more generally. The building that until recently housed the Western Australian Police Headquarters was opened in 1975. It stands at Perth’s eastern gateway looking outwards across the River Swan and the Causeway which crosses it. The use of the Police Headquarters building spanned the time during which Western Australia’s economy became increasingly dependent on mining and other resource-related extraction industries. During this same time Western Australia’s government became increasingly authoritarian. This essay argues that the Police Headquarters building can be understood as expressing this authoritarian shift. One element of this can be found in the building’s use of the International Style. At the same time, and consonant with this transformation, the positioning and form of the building enabled a structure of surveillance which has been a key aspect of modern government.

Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency National Institute of Forensic Science (ANZPAA NIFS) – the first 21 years

Australian New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency National Institute of Forensic Science (ANZPAA NIFS) – the first 21 years

Reports from the Inaugural Australasian Policing Forum Executive Session 2009-2011

This paper on the Future of Policing in Australia arises from the work of the first Australasian Policing Forum conducted over several sessions between March 2009 and March 2011 at the Australian Institute of Police Management (AIPM) in conjunction with Australian Research Council, Centre for Excellence in Policing and Security (ARC CEPS). The paper is written by participants from Victoria Police (Lucinda Nolan), South Australia Police (Michael Cornish and Linda Williams) and the Australian National University (Roderic Broadhurst), who came together to conjure some likely futures for Australia and their impact on police. Anticipating what the future might bring for police was the challenge addressed by this group. The report does not try to predict what Australia will be like in 2021 but rather proposed some possibilities based on how Australia’s social cohesion and economy might evolve. The group focused on the economy because changes and shocks in the economy were thought to be crucial in the challenges faced by police. The role of social cohesion (and social inclusion) was also seen as important because the fabric of the community is undergoing a transformation as Australian households become older, smaller, more mobile and less engaged in traditional or organised activities (e.g. such as church, sporting clubs and other groups). The report makes several suggestions and recommendations about how Australian policing forces could adapt to the likely changes to be faced in 2021 and beyond.

Selecting witness protection officers: developing a test battery for Australian police

The aim of the study was to develop a measure identifying specific skill sets of effective witness protection (WP) officers. Two representative groups produced a job analysis for WP officers from which we generated a pool of items forming a Behavioural Observation Scale (BOS). Supervisors of 50 Australian WP officers (40 men) completed the BOS. Exploratory factor analysis produced a 38-item BOS resolving into three factors, Policing skills, Partition skills and Interpersonal skills, explaining > 69% of the variance with excellent internal consistency of > .90. The BOS represents a reliable and valid tool for selecting WP officers.

When only a doctor will do

When only a doctor will do

Trust, trustworthiness and trust-building in international policing missions

Trust is widely accepted as being central to domestic police effectiveness and legitimacy. It facilitates dealings between the public and the police, and eases relationships between the individuals within police services. In this article, we argue that trust has an equally fundamental role in international policing missions, yet establishing trustworthy policing arrangements is even more difficult, for a variety of reasons. We examine a number of these reasons here. The data used is drawn from interviews with Australian police on international deployment in Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. As the data from case studies indicate, international policing missions often take place in countries with low levels of public trust in the police. For many in these countries, international interventions can be matters of ambivalence or even induce active resistance and resentment. Finding ways of cooperating and collaborating, if not trusting, are fundamental to achieving international policing mission objectives. The article therefore considers some ways in which these missions may minimize distrust and earn trust.

Police in the Development Space: Australia's international police capacity builders

International police now contribute the second largest proportion of personnel to peacekeeping missions after militaries. They are thus key contributors to post-conflict transitions in developing countries. In the past decade Australian police have played a major role in a range of international missions in the Asia-Pacific region, partially funded by Australia's international development budget. Increasingly the Australian Federal Police, as Australia's lead agency in this area, has explicitly adopted the development language of capacity building to describe a significant part of their role. This paper considers the contribution of Australian police to building or developing the capacity of new and/or re-formed police forces following conflict. It also examines the degree to which international police missions are able to contribute to broader development goals and achievements within these settings. In doing so, it engages with the question of ‘outsiders’ (non-development professionals) performing development work in the increasingly populated space of post-conflict recovery and reconstruction.

Personality and the effort-reward imbalance model of stress: Individual differences in reward sensitivity

The Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) model comprises both situational components (i.e. effort and reward) and a person-specific component (overcommitment). The aims of this study were to investigate the role of theoretically and historically linked personality variables (i.e. overcommitment and Type A personality) within the ERI model and to expand and extend the ERI model by investigating the contribution of individual reward components to both psychological (i.e. psychological distress) and attitudinal (i.e. affective commitment) employee strain indicators. A total of 897 police officers from a large Australian police agency participated in the study. The results provided no evidence of an interaction effect of effort or reward with overcommitment. The Type A variables did, however, make significant contributions and were involved in a number of interactions, suggesting that the person-specific component of the ERI model could be extended with the Type A personality profile. The findings also suggest that the esteem component of reward has the greatest relevance to employee outcomes, although tangible aspects of reward are more likely to act as a buffer of perceived work demand.

Using job strain and organizational justice models to predict multiple forms of employee performance behaviours among Australian policing personnel

The overall purpose of this investigation was to examine the relationship between stress-related working conditions and three forms of employee performance behaviours: in-role behaviours, citizenship behaviours directed at other individuals and citizenship behaviours directed at the organization. The potentially stressful working conditions were based on the job strain model (incorporating job demands, job control and social support) as well as organizational justice theory. A sample of Australian-based police officers (n = 640) took part in this study and the data were collected via a mail-out survey. Multiple regression analyses were undertaken to assess both the strength and the nature of the relationships between the working conditions and employee performance and these analyses included tests for additive, interactional and curvilinear effects. The overall results indicated that a significant proportion of the explained variance in all three outcome measures was attributed to the additive effects of demand, control and support. The level of variance associated with the organizational justice dimensions was relatively small, although there were signs that specific dimensions of justice may provide unique insights into the relationship between job stressors and employee performance. The implications of these and other notable findings are discussed.

Patterns of graffiti offending: towards recognition that graffiti offending is more than ‘kids messing around’

Graffiti is often viewed as a nuisance ‘kids’ crime, an act of youthful resistance and, as such, it is sometimes given a lower policing prioritisation level than more ‘serious’ crimes. In this study, the three-year offending histories of 798 graffitists were extracted from the Western Australian Police Information Management System database. To address the study's aim of determining whether age-differentiated patterns of offending exist among three age-cohorts of offenders (i.e. preteens, adolescents and adults), the number of offences, the number of contacts with police, the type of offences and the rank category of each offence for each of the three age-cohort were calculated. The findings reveal that while 96 graffiti offenders had only one recorded graffiti offence, the majority of graffitists (n=702) were recidivist offenders involved in multiple crimes. The most prevalent crime among the recidivist preteen and early adolescent cohort of graffiti offenders was burglary; however, the recidivist late-adolescent and adult cohorts of graffiti offenders committed more violent and drug-related crimes.

Graffiti Offenders' Patterns of Desistance from, and Persistence in, Crime: New Insights into Reducing Recidivist Offending

While graffiti is a gateway crime towards more serious criminal offending, little is known about graffitists’ patterns of desistance from, and persistence in, crime. This paper addresses this knowledge shortfall through an examination of the Western Australian Police Information Management System (IMS) database for three age-groups (i.e. preteens, adolescents, adults) and three categories of graffiti offenders (Early Desisters, Limited Persisters, Chronic Persisters). Descriptive and chi-squared statistics reveal that: i) nearly three-quarters of all of the 667 preteen, adolescent and adult graffiti offenders desisted from further offending after their first or second contact with police; ii) the mainly adolescent cohort of Limited Persister offenders account for the majority of all recorded violent crime; and c) most graffiti offenders are processed through the court system for both their graffiti and non-graffitirelated offences. The implications for designing recidivist intervention programmes that target offenders at the different stages of their offending are discussed.

Setting up an off-site emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a DVI incident: disaster victim management (DVM)

Forensic mortuaries in all Australian jurisdictions are dealing with increasing workloads, with routine cases regularly occupying greater than 50%, and often as much as 85%, of existing cold room body storage capacity, particularly over long weekends and during seasonal increases in respiratory infections. Hence the need to deal with a sudden influx of deceased persons or multiple body parts in a mass fatality incident would overwhelm most Australian forensic mortuaries, thereby requiring other means of body storage and processing. Exercise "Construct" was a joint South Australian Police (SAPol) and Forensic Science South Australia exercise designed to practice the establishment and construction of an emergency mortuary facility (EMF) to deal with a mass fatality incident and the subsequent disaster victim identification process. The aims of the exercise were to test preparedness, activation and construction processes relative to the establishment of an EMF. The exercise provided the opportunity to identify gaps in the capacity to successfully complete the tasks within the allotted time frames. The exercise reinforced the need to have a comprehensive and clearly documented process which must include a current list of suppliers who can deliver goods and services in a timely manner. The aim of this paper is to report on the exercise findings and share the experience with other jurisdictions. It will also provide other jurisdictions with the opportunity to consider whether the South Australian model will be useful to them in improving their own response when confronted with a mass fatality incident that may overwhelm existing local mortuary capacities and capabilities.

‘It sounds like they shouldn't be here’: immigration checks on the streets of Sydney

Australian state police have historically held wide-ranging powers which reflect their origins as all-encompassing administrators and agents of control over unruly colonial subjects. Contemporary police powers to stop and question individuals to establish whether they are lawfully present stem from at least 1958 when they were incorporated into section 188 of the Migration Act. There is no official monitoring of the use of stop and search powers in this or any other context, and the capacity for police to make on-the-spot checks has been enhanced by the establishment of the Immigration Status System which provides immediate feedback about immigration status, 24 hours a day. This paper will draw on statistical data, survey responses and interviews with senior New South Wales police to build up a picture of their immigration status checking practices, concentrating on opportunistic street encounters. The reported starting point – of directing attention to those who are perceived to be ‘out of place’ – embeds street-level border control into everyday practices of order maintenance policing. Questions of immigration status are found to be closely intertwined with determinations of identity, highlighting the importance in a globalising world of marking non-citizens as ‘surveillable subjects’, and raising deeper questions about entitlement and belonging.

Success in Forensic Science Research and Other Collaborative Projects: Meeting Your Partners’ Expectations

Abstract Forensic science is increasingly used in civil and criminal investigations and court proceedings. Over the past decade there has been a marked increase in the number of large collaborative and interagency research projects looking at the effectiveness of forensic science. Whether these large inter- agency projects will be successful is based on two fundamentals: whether the research produces quality outputs and, more importantly, whether the outputs match the expectations of research partners and stakeholders. We discuss the importance of understanding what partners and stakeholders expect and need from projects in which they invest. We explored expectations in a large Australian project assessing ‘The Effectiveness of Forensic Science in the Criminal Justice System’. This collaboration is between two Australian police forces, the National Institute of Forensic Science, and three Australian and one European university. We found that the way stakeholders interpreted the title of the project influe...