Adrian Cherney

Fostering cooperation with the police: How do ethnic minorities in Australia respond to procedural justice-based policing?:

Public cooperation with police is essential for the control of crime and disorder. Hence, understanding factors that shape public cooperation with the police is important. However, Australian and international studies show that police find it difficult to elicit cooperation from ethnic communities, this made difficult by the fact that ethnic groups display low levels of trust and confidence in the police. This study examines the role that procedural justice plays in fostering minority group perceptions of police legitimacy and their willingness to cooperate with police. Using survey data collected from 1204 Australian citizens, this study tests whether procedurally fair policing can enhance perceptions of police legitimacy and nurture cooperation among ethnic minorities in Australia. Findings reveal that procedural justice predicts views of police legitimacy more so than instrumental factors for both minority and majority group members. The results also suggest that ethnicity moderates the effect of procedural justice on cooperation; specifically, procedural justice is shown to be less effective for nurturing cooperation among ethnic minorities than majority group members. A group identity perspective is used to explain these findings. The findings also have implications for how the police can foster better relationships with ethnically diverse communities.

Ethnicity, trust and cooperation with police: testing the dominance of the process-based model

Some scholars question whether procedural justice is the key driver in promoting support for the police across all cultural contexts. In this study we examine the relationship between procedural justice, police performance, trust in the police and the willingness to cooperate with the police, and we compare Vietnamese and Indian ancestral groups with the general population in Australia. We find that procedural justice is less effective in encouraging cooperation with the police among Vietnamese and Indian ancestral groups when compared with a general population group. Procedural justice is also found to be less effective in promoting trust among Vietnamese participants, compared with the general population group. Instead, police performance is found to be more effective in promoting trust in the police among Vietnamese participants. We set out to explain these observed differences and describe why some ethnic minority groups may judge process-based factors to be less important when it comes to trusting the police or being willing to cooperate with the police.

Crime prevention in Australia: Beyond 'what works?'

Abstract Recent decades have seen governments around Australia launch crime prevention policies to much fanfare. Often, however, achievements have fallen well short of expectations. A key problem is that too many attempts to develop and implement crime prevention have not thought through and articulated what relevant strategies might signify and hope to achieve. In the absence of a basic understanding of, and agreement about, the overall enterprise in which central and local players are engaged, program sustainability and drift problems prevail. Attempts to overcome these difficulties simply by maintaining that polices must be based on ‘what works?’ principles are not helpful. This article works through the implications of the above observations for the way crime prevention strategies should be designed and administered. It argues that commitment to flexible problem identification and solving in the context of a clearly articulated crime prevention planning process is critical to success. However, for crime prevention to emerge and be sustained, governments must see it as consisting of a dialogue between central and local levels. This will only be achieved if strategies developed by the centre are informed by, and reaffirm, a clear political vision and sense of mission.

Networks and Meta-regulation: Strategies Aimed at Governing Illicit Synthetic Drugs

New regulatory state scholarship has documented the rise of pluralized forms of governance that lay beyond central states. This has resulted in regulation being constituted by dense networks of actors and institutions. This article sets out to explore the role of police agencies within these networks through a case study of illicit synthetic drug control. Reducing the supply of illicit synthetic drugs presents unique challenges for the police compared to the control of traditional plant-based illicit drugs such as cannabis or heroin. A key focus of reducing supply is that of governing the interface between licit and illicit market activities. This strategy has required police agencies to increasingly engage in forms of meta-regulation. Under such a strategy, the police role is increasingly one of acting as “brokers” i.e., connecting the internal capacity of external institutions to crime control goals and promoting collective responses around externalities (i.e., opportunities for illegal conduct) generated by legitimate commercial activity.

Are policy-makers interested in social research? Exploring the sources and uses of valued information among public servants in Australia

Abstract This article explores the use of research and expertise within a selection of government agencies at state and federal levels in Australia. A recent survey of public officials provides new data on the reported use of evidence and expertise sourced from within the public service and from external sources. The survey instrument targeted the policy, program and evaluation staff in human service agencies and central policy coordination agencies. The survey findings provide new information on public servants’ policy skills and organisational context, their attitudes to non-government sources of expert evidence and knowledge, and their perceptions of the relevance of academic social research. Data are reported on the relative importance assigned by public officials in state and federal agencies to various sources of expert information. Factors that hinder and facilitate the uptake of external research by policy-related officials are canvassed, with special attention to organisational cultures and practices. Some similarities and differences between types of agencies are noted, especially those between state-level and federal agencies. The broader political context of policy work is also highlighted.

Policing terrorism with procedural justice: the role of police legitimacy and law legitimacy

Research shows that procedural justice influences public cooperation with the police. However, it cannot be assumed that factors that influence cooperation in general crime control also apply to people’s willingness to cooperate in counter-terrorism. This proposition is tested among a sample of Arabic-speaking people in Australia. We explore whether procedural justice has an impact on reported willingness to cooperate in counterterrorism policing, and if this is mediated by law legitimacy and identity related factors. Our results show that perceptions about the legitimacy of the law and identification with Australian society matter a great deal when it comes to predicting cooperation in counter-terrorism. In contrast, perceptions of police legitimacy matter most for predicting cooperation in general crime control activities. Our discussion and results are linked to debates about how best to police terrorism.

Police auxiliaries in Australia: Police liaison officers and the dilemmas of being part of the police extended family

Studies on security governance have highlighted that internationally there has been the pluralisation of police roles and functions. One feature of these developments has been the emergence of dedicated quasi-police personnel, termed police auxiliaries. Public police agencies have been instrumental in supporting the growth of police auxiliaries, promoting their adoption as part of broader police reforms to improve the engagement of ethnic minority groups. One example of these trends in Australia has been the emergence of police liaison officers (PLOs). This paper draws upon research into a PLO programme in the Australian State of Queensland in order to explore the intra-organisational features of auxiliarisation. Data from qualitative interviews are analysed to highlight that while police auxiliaries do make an important contribution to improving police community engagement, they face their own dilemmas and challenges that occur from being part of the police extended family. One relates to role conflict arising from a conflicting sense of accountability to the police and the wider community. This is particularly pronounced for police auxiliaries who are of an ethnic/racial background.

Procedural justice and legitimacy in policing

Introduction.- Effective Approaches Using the Principles of Procedural Justice.- Use of Research Evidence.- Barriers to Implementation.- Mechanisms that Help Translation.- Conclusions.

Utilization of social science research: Results of a pilot study among Australian sociologists and criminologists

Researchers, as well as decision-makers and practitioners, often wonder what becomes of the results of research in the social sciences. At present in Australia, we know very little on the subject. This article reports results from a survey of academic sociologists and criminologists about the utilization of their research. It tests an empirical model that derives its dependent and independent variables from prior studies on knowledge utilization, and defines research utilization as a six-stage cumulative process. Results indicate that while there are decreasing reported levels of research utilization across the stages by practitioners and professionals, academic sociologists and criminologists report their research is more often used conceptually. Variables that distinguished respondents who report high levels of utilization were investments in linkage and exchange mechanisms. The discussion is placed in a broader context related to measuring the impact of social research and the factors that inhibit and facilitate this process.

Contingency and Politics The Local Government Community Safety officer role

Community safety officers have become central to the delivery of crime prevention and community safety policy both in Australia and elsewhere. This article reviews the community safety officer (CSO) role in local government and provides results from interviews with CSOs in the Australian state of Victoria. The experiences, challenges and problems faced by CSOs in implementing Victorian schemes are outlined. It is argued that the focus by governments and criminologists on developing training packages, competencies and identifying ‘what works’ discounts the administrative and political environments in which local level CSOs work. These contexts present obstacles to strategy development and implementation. Likewise a similar criticism is made of the governmentality thesis, that it too fails to engage with and interrogate local practice, overlooking issues of contingency and agency that encompass the CSO role. It is concluded that this role is one concerned with change management, and that building CSO capacity requires the devolution of authority, resources and decision-making powers. Understanding how CSOs manage the barriers and ‘crisis’ they face in crime prevention and community safety will tell us more about ‘what works’ that is germane to effective policy development and implementation.