Janet Ransley

Police Education and the University Sector: Contrasting Models from the Australian Experience

University education for police officers continues to be heralded as a major component in the reform of police organizations and police culture. Interestingly, the extensive research literature from the United States over the past 30 years remains ambivalent about the extent to which education achieves these objectives. Individual officers doubtless gain personal and professional benefits, but the relationship between higher education and police effectiveness, professionalism and accountability remains unclear. Nevertheless, the Australian experience since the late 1980s is that concerted efforts to provide university programs for police almost invariably arise from periods of crisis in police organizations and the recommendations of official inquiries into those organizations. Two educational “reform” models have resulted, one based on liberal education and the other on a paradigm labeled “professional policing.” These now constitute the main (contrasting) paradigms for police education and training across different states. The case study concludes that the relationship between university education and preparation for policing is likely to remain problematic.

Policing in an era of uncertainty

The twenty‐first century has brought new challenges for police, in Australia as in other Western democracies. Terrorism, globalisation, large‐scale population movements, and entrenched social problems pose crime control threats that are increasingly seen as beyond the scope and capabilities of traditional policing. New agencies have been established, private policing has boomed, and governments have sought to make individuals, businesses, and community organisations increasingly responsible for their own safety. To maintain, or regain, their leadership of this new agenda, police agencies need first to recognise and understand the changing environment and its challenges. Our paper uses the theory and policy framework of ‘third party policing’ to examine the role of police in this age of insecurity, complexity, and uncertainty.

Violence in and Around Entertainment Districts: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Late‐Night Lockout Legislation

Violence in entertainment districts is a major problem across urban landscapes throughout the world. Research shows that licensed premises are the third most common location for homicides and serious assaults, accounting for one in ten fatal and nonfatal assaults. One class of interventions that aims to reduce violence in entertainment districts involves the use of civil remedies: a group of strategies that use civil or regulatory measures as legal “levers” to reduce problem behavior. One specific civil remedy used to reduce problematic behavior in entertainment districts involves manipulation of licensed premise trading hours. This article uses generalized linear models to analyze the impact of lockout legislation on recorded violent offences in two entertainment districts in the Australian state of Queensland. Our research shows that 3 a.m. lockout legislation led to a direct and significant reduction in the number of violent incidents inside licensed premises. Indeed, the lockouts cut the level of violent crime inside licensed premises by half. Despite these impressive results for the control of violence inside licensed premises, we found no evidence that the lockout had any impact on violence on streets and footpaths outside licensed premises that were the site for more than 80 percent of entertainment district violence. Overall, however, our analysis suggests that lockouts are an important mechanism that helps to control the level of violence inside licensed premises but that finely grained contextual responses to alcohol-related problems are needed rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

The case for third party policing

Third-party policing is defined as police efforts to persuade or coerce organizations or non-offending persons, such as public housing agencies, property owners, parents, health and building inspectors, and business owners to take some responsibility for preventing crime or reducing crime problems (Buerger and Mazerolle 1998: 301). In third-party policing, the police create or enhance crime control nodes in locations or situations where crime control guardianship was previously absent or non-effective. Sometimes the police use cooperative consultation with community members, parents, inspectors, and regulators to encourage and convince third parties to take on more crime control or prevention responsibility. Central, however, to third-party policing is the police use of a range of civil, criminal, and regulatory rules and laws, to engage, coerce (or force) third parties into taking some crime control responsibility. It is the regulatory and legal provisions that dictate the process for third-party intervention. In third-party policing, laws and legal mechanisms are directed at willing or unwilling non-offending third parties, with the object of facilitating or coercing them into helping to control the behavior of offending ultimate targets. This type of policing, however, is not new. Some might argue that this is just good, proactive policing. Indeed, for many years the police have sought alternative solutions to regulate activities and solve crime problems (Eck and Spelman 1987; Goldstein 1990; Goldstein 2003).

Civil Litigation Against Police in Australia: Exploring Its Extent, Nature and Implications for Accountability

Abstract Much recent policing reform has been concerned with strengthening organisational and individual accountability through complaints, discipline systems and external oversight. Civil litigation against police has largely been ignored as an accountability measure. This research aimed to broaden the understanding of police litigation in Australia, and determine the implications for its use as an accountability mechanism. While the findings are not definitive, they generally conform with previous research outcomes that most cases initiated by civilians involve allegations of police abuse of power or process corruption. A new finding is that police sue their own organisations at about the same rate as they are sued by members of the public, although primarily for unfair dismissal. The results show a need for more detailed research, but highlight that civil litigation can form part of a regulatory web for identifying, controlling and preventing police misconduct.

Policing methamphetamine problems: a framework for synthesising expert opinion and evaluating alternative policy options

Increasingly, governments and police agencies require evidence of effectiveness and efficiency with respect to law enforcement policies. The existing what works literature, specifically on drug law enforcement, focuses mainly on the effectiveness question when making complex choices between drug policy alternatives, but fails when it comes to incorporating empirical evidence and the experience of key experts in the decision-making process. In addition, little attempt has been made to employ sophisticated techniques to assist in complex policy decision making with respect to funding competing policing policy alternatives. We use the methamphetamine problem in Australia to illustrate a way of evaluating, using multi-criteria analysis, alternative policy options for developing better drug policy.

Analysing pseudoephedrine/methamphetamine policy options in Australia using multi-criteria decision modelling

BACKGROUND In this paper we capture and synthesize the unique knowledge of experts so that choices regarding policy measures to address methamphetamine consumption and dependency in Australia can be strengthened. We examine perceptions of the: (1) influence of underlying factors that impact on the methamphetamine problem; (2) importance of various models of intervention that have the potential to affect the success of policies; and (3) efficacy of alternative pseudoephedrine policy options. METHODS We adopt a multi-criteria decision model to unpack factors that affect decisions made by experts and examine potential variations on weight/preference among groups. Seventy experts from five groups (i.e. academia (18.6%), government and policy (27.1%), health (18.6%), pharmaceutical (17.1%) and police (18.6%)) in Australia participated in the survey. RESULTS Social characteristics are considered the most important underlying factor, prevention the most effective strategy and Project STOP the most preferred policy option with respect to reducing methamphetamine consumption and dependency in Australia. One-way repeated ANOVAs indicate a statistically significant difference with regards to the influence of underlying factors (F(2.3, 144.5)=11.256, p<.001), effectiveness of interventions (F(2.4, 153.1)=28.738, p<.001) and policy options (F(2.8, 175.5)=70.854, p<.001). CONCLUSION A majority of respondents believed that genetic, biological, emotional, cognitive and social factors are the most influential explanatory variables in terms of methamphetamine consumption and dependency. Most experts support the use of preventative mechanisms to inhibit drug initiation and delayed drug uptake. Compared to other policies, Project STOP (which aims to disrupt the initial diversion of pseudoephedrine) appears to be a more preferable preventative mechanism to control the production and subsequent sale and use of methamphetamine. This regulatory civil law lever engages third parties in controlling drug-related crime. The literature supports third-party partnerships as it engages experts who have knowledge and expertise with respect to prevention and harm minimization.

The Fitzgerald Symposium: An Introduction

This article introduces the collection of six papers that commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the tabling of the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (‘the Fitzgerald Report’). The report exposed the entrenched corruption among Queensland’s political and police leaders, deeply ingrained abuses of process and power, and an inept public administration. It led to the prosecution and imprisonment of key politicians and police. The Fitzgerald Report was notable not just for these direct outcomes, but also for its prescriptions for widespread and enduring reform, which came from Fitzgerald’s analysis of the underlying causes of police corruption in Queensland. This article places the Fitzgerald Inquiry in its historical context, and provides a brief outline of the key provisions of the Fitzgerald Report. It concludes with a brief introduction to each of the six articles in this collection. These articles critically examine the aftermath of the Fitzgerald Report and the reforms that Fitzgerald recommended. They ask whether Fitzgerald’s blueprint for accountable and ethical government was achieved — or indeed capable of being achieved — and whether it has stood the test of time.

Medicalizing the Detention of Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory: A New/Old Regime of Control?

The forcible removal and detention on reserves of many of Australia’s Indigenous people during much of the 20th century was pervasive and, according to Penny Pether, influenced her understandings o...

Disrupting domestic ‘ice’ production: deterring drug runners with a third-party policing intervention

ABSTRACT The diversion of pseudoephedrine (PSE) into illicit drug markets is a major problem facing countries throughout the world. Domestic production of the illicit synthetic drug methamphetamine often relies on ‘drug runners’ obtaining PSE from community pharmacies that service the general public in a retail market. One approach to creating deterrence opportunities in this illicit market is the co-option of non-offending third parties to control or prevent diversion of PSE through Third-Party Policing (TPP). TPP relies on police partnerships with third parties, who use legal levers to target crime problems. In this paper, we describe a TPP partnership between police and pharmacies. The partnership draws on laws that require pharmacists to keep records and report retail sales of PSE to police. Using a survey of 620 community pharmacists from two Australian jurisdictions, we examine pharmacist observations of the regulations and the partnership, specifically their perceived ‘deterrent impact’ on preventing PSE diversion. We find that the TPP intervention enacted by pharmacists is a crucial mechanism to deter drug runners and prevent pharmaceutical diversion of PSE.