David Dixon

From Prohibition to Regulation: Bookmaking, Anti-Gambling and the Law

Anti-gambling in late Victorian and Edwardian society the NAGLs campaign against racecourse bookmaking the prohibition of street betting gambling and the NAGL 1906-1919 an alternative to prohibition policing illegal gambling Churchills betting duty from anti-gambling to compulsive gambling from prohibition to regulation.

Anh Hai: Policing, Culture and Social Exclusion in a Street Heroin Market

This paper reports research on how Indo-Chinese youth experience and perceive policing in Cabramatta, a predominantly Vietnamese community located in South Western Sydney. Interviews were conducted with 123 Indo-Chinese youth involved in heroin use and/or distribution. Results indicate that encounters with police were often conducted in a climate of fear, racism and hostility. Many were subject to routine harassment, intimidation and mistreatment. Young people were detained and searched unlawfully and in a manner interpreted as denigrating and offensive by the wider Indo-Chinese community. We also found evidence of questionable and illegal conduct by police officers in seizing drugs and money. Young peoples perceptions of their treatment by the police are shaped by their political and economic exclusion which, ironically, is compounded by their cultural inclusion. Far from expressing the world view of an alien underclass, participants in the study assessed police activities according to mainstream normative values. Using empirical data we develop and extend the notion of social exclusion as a complex and internally contradictory process characterized by the interplay and possible conflict between its cultural, political, and economic dimensions.

Property Crime and Income Generation by Heroin Users

Abstract This paper provides a detailed analysis of patterns of income generation among 202 active heroin users in South West Sydney. We explore both sources of income and the relative contribution of different types of income generating activities, including drug sales and related activities, property crime, prostitution, legitimate income and avoided expenditures. Despite claims that heroin use leads inevitably to property crime, drug market activities accounted for a greater proportion of drug user income in this sample. Results indicate that law enforcement crackdowns that reduce opportunities for generating income from the drug market may increase property crime by heroin users.

Safeguarding the rights of suspects in police custody

Reporting findings from research on the impact of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), this paper assesses the effectiveness of rights provided for suspects in police custody which were intended to counterbalance increased police powers. It discusses (1) the involvement in the detention and questioning process of parents, social workers, and legal advisers; (2) the procedures which regulate the detention and questioning of suspects before charge; and (3) the effectiveness of sanctions and supervision. It concludes that these safeguards have had a significant, although variable, impact. Factors that have limited this impact are assessed. Claims that suspects’ rights are excessively hampering the detection of crime are criticized.

Policing, crime and public health: Lessons for Australia from the 'New York miracle'

This article examines the influence on policing in Sydney, Australia of the crime control strategies developed in New York City in the 1990s, which are popularly credited with having significantly reduced crime rates. The ‘New York miracle’ is considered as an ‘enthusiasm’, a positive relation of the moral panic. Claims that the NYPD reduced crime with a strategy based on ‘zero tolerance’ or ‘broken windows’ are critically examined. The second half of the article presents a case study of how international developments in policing impacted on a heroin market in Cabramatta, a suburb of Sydney which, in the 1990s, became known as Australia’s ‘heroin capital’. The study shows how transferred policies are implemented, how elements of them may conflict, and how the crucial transfer may be not so much of particular policies, but rather of less specific perceptions and attitudes, in this case a confidence in the ability of police to reduce crime. It concludes by focusing on the collateral damage (particularly to public health) caused by police crackdowns on drug markets. Research is reported which found an alarming increase in the incidence of hepatitis C among intravenous drug users as a result of policing activity in Cabramatta.

“A Window into the Interviewing Process?” The Audio-visual Recording of Police Interrogation in New South Wales, Australia

Drawing on empirical research into audio-visually recorded interrogation in New South Wales, this article comments on the implications for criminal justice in jurisdictions facing problems and controversies in the questioning of suspects. It considers whether the various benefits and harms that were predicted to flow from audio-visual recording have eventuated, focusing on two issues: the interpretation of images and unrecorded questioning. Its conclusion is that audio-visual recording offers significant benefits to criminal justice, but is no panacea (and can even be counterproductive if treated as such). Audio-visual recording has to be part of a comprehensive regulatory regime; this article concludes by arguing for a renewed commitment to the legal regulation of policing.

Questioning Suspects: A Comparative Perspective

This article contrasts the ways in which English-speaking jurisdictions have responded to concerns about practices in the police interrogation of suspects. Since the mid-1990s, a stark contrast has developed between the methods taught to North American police officers via the “Reid Technique” and similar U.S. training programs and the strategy of “investigative interviewing” in England and Wales (and increasingly elsewhere in Europe and Australasia). This policy divergence must be understood in the context of differing responses to miscarriages of justice and investigative failures (caused, at least in part, by inefficient interrogation techniques) and the knowledge which inquiries into these miscarriages and failures produced. While investigative interviewing is part of a response to criminal process failure which sees both wrongful convictions and failed prosecutions as problematic, the United States has been slow to acknowledge the scale of a problem which has not only convicted (and executed) the innocent, but also failed to bring the guilty to justice. Drawing on empirical research in Australia, where audio-visual recording has been used routinely since the early 1990s, the article notes the limits and benefits of electronic recording, which too often is presented as a panacea. The article notes that most discussion of American interrogation takes place in an empirical vacuum and expresses doubts about the prevalent accounts of police practice. It also notes some recent interest in the United States in alternative approaches to interrogating suspects which have developed from the experience of questioning terrorist suspects.

Crime, Criminology and Public Policy

This supplementary special issue of the Journal comprises the 1994 John Barry Memorial Lecture at the University of Melbourne, three presentations from a public symposium sponsored by the University of New South Wales which was included in the program of the Tenth Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, and an additional comparative paper, along with comments on each. They are collectively presented here under the conference title, ‘Crime, Criminology, and Public Policy’. This theme was chosen in an attempt to promote understanding of the links between theory, empirical research and public policy development. The last thematic issue of the journal, ‘The Lure of Relevance’, examined some of ‘the problems and dilemmas of praxis’ in criminology (Laster 1994:3). No apology is made for returning so quickly to some of the same themes. Policy in this region’s criminal justice is increasingly prey to law and order politics. Debate continues to be dominated by rhetoric rather than analysis; by ‘common sense’ rather than theory or principle; by anecdote and the citation of individual instances rather than research (Brown & Hogg 1992). The Australian version of law and order politics sometimes has a particular complexion: in contrast to the ideological commitment found elsewhere, cynicism and the search for short term political advantage appear to dominate here. A prime example of this tendency is provided by the squabble during the New South Wales 1995 state election over who would be toughest on crime, which led to the current Government’s plans to introduce mandatory lifetime incarceration for certain offences. Some politicians play on community fears about crime, then disingenuously consult public opinion, before cynically promoting laws which will appease ‘the public’. This approach treats criminal justice policy as (despite the controversies which often surround it) essentially straightforward, a realm of ‘common sense’ and public opinion, not of contested knowledge and principles. In this climate, it is hardly surprising that criminologists usually find their messages ignored. More important than specific policy changes, it is this climate which needs to be changed. Criminal justice should be treated as an important area of public administration, not merely as a way of attracting cheap votes. If public policy is to be properly developed, it should be founded on theory, principles, and empirical research. It is true that this may well be an unrealistic ideal. On one hand, politics is always going to be about more (or less) than rational policy-making. It is wrong to privilege the role of ‘expertise’. Debate about crime should be wide-ranging and inclusive; but it has to be informed, and this places a special responsibility on politicians to take crime seriously and to look beyond short-term political advantage. On the other hand, criminology can rarely offer the unqualified answers which policy-makers demand: our expert advice is all too often tentative and

Change in Policing, Changing Police

Clifford Shearing’s contribution to the study of policing has been outstanding. In a series of areas, his work has introduced new ways of seeing and understanding. The collection which he edited on Organizational Police Deviance (1981) has become a standard point of reference for people trying to move beyond the confines of standard analyses of official corruption and misconduct. His work with Philip Stenning on private policing (1984, 1987) criticised the orthodox identification of policing with the state in a way which, in the light of subsequent developments (Johnston 1992; Shearing 1992), seems remarkably prescient. With Richard Ericson (199 1), he challenged the accepted normative conceptualization of police culture, and in its place offered an account drawing on postmodernist theory which sees culture as carried and transmitted by narratives and stories. With Mike Brogden (1993), his study of policing in South Africa rejects the usual attempts simply to import British and North American policing, and instead suggests that South Africa offers much for us to learn. In each of these areas of study, Shearing’s work demonstrates a concern for theory which so often has been lacking in policing studies.

Protest and disorder: the Public Order Act 1986: commentary three

In contrast to the extensive, continuing debate about the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, there has been relatively little public reaction to the Public Order Act 1986. Several reasons for this may be suggested, but of particular importance seems to have been an understandable ambivalence towards the legislation on the part of many potential critics. The Act is not a simple target; among its very diverse and complex provisions, there are some which may be expected to be beneficial, particularly in protecting vulnerable individuals and communities