Policing and the Community
in Australia
Rick Sarre
For the IPES, Bahrain, October, 2003
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Australian police services
Australia has 6 large, centralised police
bureaucracies (+ a Federal police service
and 1 Territory service) covering, in
most cases, extensive geographical areas.
About 40,000 officers at approx
230/100,000 population.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Community policing
Principally, community policing is designed with the
idea of preventing criminal activity but ALSO
tackling and reducing the conditions under which
deviant behaviour may be encouraged. Categories of
community policing can be listed as the following:
1. problem-solving policing
2. inter-agency cooperation
3. partnership with the community
I wish to focus on the last two.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Problem-solving policing
 This
idea emanated from the Herman
Goldstein notion of problem-oriented
policing and has re-emerged, arguably,
as intelligence-led policing. Policing
on the beat, good intelligence inspired
by having the confidence of the local
community and informants.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Inter-agency cooperation
The idea that public police forces should
not discourage the growth of ad hoc
protection services has been alive in
Australian jurisdictions for many years.
Governments have encouraged an
expansion of the role in peace-keeping
currently being played by private
personnel and professional security
providers.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Inter-agency cooperation
There is currently dawning a new era in
Australian policing that presents police
services with many opportunities to
integrate their own resources with those
of other institutions, including private
providers, in establishing an efficient, yet
democratic, policing ‘network’.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Inter-agency cooperation
That is, re-vitalising the notion of
‘community policing’ into a coordinated
policing network where there are new
models for mobilizing the community
sector (public/private/communitybased) and integrating their capacities
into existing structures. The work of
Australian academics at REGNET is
important in this regard.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Community partnerships
I wish to look at Indigenous Australians and policing
issues. This setting highlights elements of all three of
the community policing strategies mentioned.
To begin: There is a massive over-representation of
Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system
today. This is an embarrassment for all Australians.
E.g. Indigenous Australians are 2% of the population
but 20% of the prison population.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
History
An unofficial policy of Aboriginal
eradication began to unfold amongst the
military peace-keepers in late 18th
century New South Wales. Australia’s
colonial history is replete with stories of
savagery, waterhole poisonings and
shootings.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
History
It was not unusual for colonial administrators
to deploy police in frontier warfare against
Indigenous tribes, and as a form of selfdefence. Caught up in a world of land theft,
attack and reprisal, colonial police, even those
who may have harboured some sympathy for
native populations, had little option but to
carry out their assigned tasks.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Legacy for the modern era
For many Aboriginal people, the first contact
they had with the police was with a
paramilitary force of dispossession,
dispensing summary justice and on some
occasions involved in the indiscriminate
massacre of clan and tribal groups. (Cunneen,
2001, p 50)
Similar themes today.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Modern day
[F]ar too much police intervention in the lives
of Aboriginal people … has been arbitrary,
discriminatory, racist and violent. There is
absolutely no doubt in my mind that the
antipathy which so many Aboriginal people
have towards police is based not just on
historical contact but upon the contemporary
experience of contact with many police
officers. (Johnston, 1991, p 195)
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Consequences
Over-policing
In the remote New South Wales town of Walgett, for
example, where 18 per cent of residents identified as
Indigenous in 1993, Amnesty International (1993)
found that there was one police officer per 96
residents, while the average for the rest of the State
of New South Wales (where just 1.8 per cent of
population are of Aboriginal descent) was one police
officer per 459 residents.

Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Consequences
High arrest rates
The use of the caution, as an alternative to arrest, is
less common for Indigenous Australians than it is for
non-Indigenous Australians for reasons that probably
relate to higher recidivism rates. This has the effect
of ‘confirming’ a self-fulfilling prophecy. E.g. In
Victoria, Indigenous young people are significantly
less likely to receive a police caution than nonIndigenous young people (11.3 per cent versus 35.6
per cent in 1995/1996).

Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Consequences
High remand in custody rates
Wright, 1999 confirmed that Aboriginality is
significantly associated with the likelihood of being
remanded in custody. He tracked 4,758 adult
defendants whose cases were finalised in 1996 in SA
magistrates courts. 25 legal and extra-legal remandin-custody predictors derived from the court and
police data were fed through a regression analysis.
The study concluded that Aboriginality is
significantly associated with a custodial outcome,
independent of any other variable in the model.

Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons: the three aspects of
community policing identified can
play a role in forging a new future
1. ‘Professional partnerships policing’  where
Aboriginal people are given a key role in
controlling anti-social behaviour, minor
infractions and serious breaches of the law  can
be and have been successfully integrated into
policing policies.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons
2. Community Constables now work in
mainstream policing activities. While it is
recognised that women are too few in number as
Aides or Community Constables, especially
given the double impact of gender and ‘racial’
inequalities in policing Indigenous women, there
have been a number of positive benefits for
police and Indigenous communities alike as a
result of these partnerships.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons
3. Training in non-racist attitudes. Yet a study
by Wortley and Homel (1995) highlighted that
police prejudice is more likely to emanate from
police interactions with Indigenous Australians
rather than inherently racist attitudes. This
finding highlights the need for strategic policymaking that moves beyond the provision of
cultural awareness programs in police training.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons
4. Customary law, community justice panels and
Indigenous-run policing patrols. There are over
one hundred of the last of these, which operate
around Australia (Blagg and Valuri, 2002). One
of the best known is the Tangentyere night patrol
and social behaviour project in Alice Springs, an
operation designed to take drunk and disorderly
people into care before police need to be called
to arrest them.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons
5. Aboriginal court: Non-appearances at court by
Indigenous offenders provide much work for police in
tracking down, and arresting, those accused persons
who have failed to answer their bail. Non-appearance,
then, has two major consequences for police and
indigenous relations: offenders are likely to be arrested
on warrant, and the likelihood of bail being refused at
the next hearing is extremely high. One initiative that
has drastically reduced the rate of non-appearances
(and therefore rates of arrest) is the Aboriginal Court.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
New horizons
6. Cautions should be made more accessible and
available as an option for police. This does not
mean to suggest that all drunkenness or
inappropriate language or behaviour in public
places is to be condoned. In many cases,
however, a stern warning to unruly persons
might be just as effective as an arrest in stopping
inappropriate behaviour.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Conclusion 1
Policy-makers need to consider designing
policing strategies that will bring about fewer
Aboriginal arrests, and make it less likely that
officers will seek custodial remands for
Indigenous offenders. Furthermore, self-policing
and Aboriginal courts in appropriate regions
should be explored as part of a broader political
agenda that embraces the possibilities of
Indigenous self-policing, self-administration of
justice and self-determination.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia
Conclusion 2
‘Community-style’ policing within Indigenous
communities will likely remain a major
challenge for governments and Indigenous
administrators alike. But if these issues remain
in the forefront of police research and policymaking, however, they promise to improve
policing for all Australians.
Rick Sarre - University of South Australia