Book Review: Australian Policing: Contemporary Issues
| Author | Tim Premier |
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486589703000209 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews 209
value for criminal justice scholars, its challenges will be important motivators
for people working in many other areas of governance.
My only serious criticism is that it lacks an index!
Roger Wettenhall
Centre for Research in Public Sector Management, University of Canberra
Australian Policing: Contemporary Issues, Duncan Chappell &Paul
Wilson (eds), Butterworths, Sydney, (1996), 246 pp.
This is the second edition of an edited volume first published in 1989. The
current book is completely re-written with a mixture of new and former
authors. The first volume was part of a wave of critical policing texts which
marked the rapid expansion of police studies in universities in the late-1980s
and early-1990s. Many of the original themes are revisited in the new volume;
such as accountability, effectiveness, training, management, and relations with
young people. Additional topics include federal law enforcement
arrangements, the policing of illicit drugs, privatisation, deaths in police
custody, and relations with the media.
The new book is a useful critique of developments in the last seven years.
Overall, the results are essentially pessimistic: recognising the major problem
of police misconduct, the failure to impact significantly on crime rates and
adopt alternative crime prevention strategies, and the continuing conflict
between police and minority groups. Chapters notable for their scholarship,
clarity and balance include those on community policing, drug control, deaths
in custody, policing young people, and media relations.
Many
of
the key contemporary issues are covered, but there are some
surprising absences - which occur at the cost of an excess of general papers
on reform. A larger number of shorter chapters would have allowed wider
scope to cover issues such as recruitment, promotion, flattening rank
structures, contract employment (uncritically embraced by some of the
authors), politicisation, union influence, police powers, treatment of victims of
crime, and gender and ethnic integration.
Some chapters are appropriately even-handed in representing the variety of
arguments involved in the topic being analysed. Many chapters, however, are
overly partisan and the quality is extremely varied. For example, one would
expect a chapter titled 'Contemporary Police Education in Australia' to
provide a round-up of current practices in all jurisdictions and a balanced
evaluation of competing models. Instead, the chapter pursues a narrow
personal campaign that extols at length the alleged virtues of the New South
Wales PREP program, then fires a short broadside in the direction of
Queensland and a long broadside at the Australian Graduate School of Police
Management. Three quarters of Australian police training programs appear to
have fallen off the map.
Some highly questionable assertions are made elsewhere at times. The
chapter on police accountability holds up Queensland's Criminal Justice
Commission as the best 'one-stop shop' for an 'independent non-police
oversight model' (pages 15 and 22). In fact the CJC engages in joint
operations with the Queensland Police Service against organised crime,
To continue reading
Request your trial