Book Review: Police in Australia. Development, Functions, Procedures
| Author | R. W. Harding |
| DOI | 10.1177/0067205X7800900206 |
| Date | 01 June 1978 |
| Published date | 01 June 1978 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK REVIEWS
Police in Australia. Development, Functions, Procedures written and
edited by
KERRY
L.
MILTE,
LL.B.,
Dip. Crim., Barrister of the Supreme
Court of Victoria; Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of
Melbourne, formerly Superintendent of Police, Australian Common-
wealth Police Force, assisted by
THOMAS
A.
WEBER,
LL.B.,
Dip. Crim.;
Research Assistant in Criminology, University of Melbourne. (Butter-
worths, 1977), pp. i-xxi, 1-511. Cloth, recommended retail price $22.50
(ISBN: 0409 49291
4);
Paperback, recommended retail price $18.50
(ISBN: 0409 49290
6).
Iam puzzled
as
to the purpose of collecting and publishing this
particular pot-pourri of materials, cases, essays and articles. Intellectual
perspicacity
is
evidently not its raison d'etre; neither does it provide
access to sources which are otherwise unavailable; nor
is
it linked by
any particular thread
or
theme. To be frank, it
is
a
hotch-potch-and
one which lacks many of the ingredients necessary to season and
thicken it.
In
the introduction the authors state that "[t]he fundamental concept
underlying this study
is
that the police ...must become and remain
the community's police and not be the agents of temporary govern-
mental capriciousness usually reflected in the enactr;nent of hasty, ill-
conceived
or
oppressive laws" (page 1). This
is
an enormously important
theme, one which will become ever more important
as
populations
increase,
as
the interdependence of various segments of society becomes
more crucial, and
as
accordingly the desire for predictability in com-
munity interaction grows.
But
the authors do not, in their compilation
of this collection, hang on to
or
develop this theme.
For
instance, the sections on forensic science though fairly interesting
in themselves are irrelevant to this theme. Again, the chapter on
Criminal Investigation, instead of addressing itself predominantly to
the delicate problem of balancing the interests of the suspect, the
police and the public, deals with such matters
as
what police should do
on arriving
at
the scene of acrime to preserve the evidence, etcetera.
This
is
the sort of information which
is
central to in-force training
at
adetectives' school but
is
at
best peripheral to the theme the authors
have purportedly chosen.
Pursuing this point alittle further, the authors do perceive the need
to pursue the theme of criminal investigation in the sort of way I
describe. But instead of including in the materials asummary
or
a
discussion of the Report on Criminal Investigation by the Australia
Law Reform Commissionland an analysis of the Criminal Investigation
Bill 1977, they present the reader with some tired and dated debates
about the Human Rights Bill of 1973.
1Report No, 2(Interim), Criminal Investigation (A.G.P.S., 1975).
248
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