Note on the Demographic Composition of Australian Police Forces and Prison Services
| Published date | 01 September 1979 |
| Author | Michael Cass,John Braithwaite |
| Date | 01 September 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587901200302 |
132 ANZJ
Crim
(1979) 12
NOTE ON THE DEMOGRAPHIC COMPOSITION OF
AUSTRALIAN
POLICE FORCES
AND
PRISON SERVICES
John Braithwaite"
and
Michael
Cass]
This research
note
presents the results
of
across-tabulation analysis of 1971
Census
data
on the composition
of
Australian police forces
and
prison
services
by sex, age,
country
of birth, educational qualifications
and
religion.
One
frequently hears confident assertions
being
made
that
acertain
Department
of
Corrective Services is run
by
"poms";
that
certain police forces
have
been
more
progressive
than
others in employing large
numbers
of
university graduates or
females; that
one
force is controlled
by
the Masons,
another
by
Catholics;
and
the
like. With the publication of the following tables, it is to
be
hoped
that in
future such assertions might
be
made
by
reference to
some
data.
Police
Forces
Table
1shows that at the time
of
the 1971 Census all
police
forces
were
at
least
97 percent male. South Australia was the State with
the
highest percentage of
female police officers
(2.9~).
All police forces have
very
similar age distributions,
with
the
exceptions that
the South Australian
and
ACT forces have notably higher proportions of young
officers (Table 2).
From
Table
3 it is clear that
the
three
eastern States (Queensland,
New
South
Wales
and
Victoria) have the lowest proportions of
police
officers
born
outside
of Australia. This is because the remaining States
and
Territories employ
substantially higher numbers of British
born
policemen. If
we
add
the Australian
and British categories together
we
find
that
all forces
are
between
94
and
98%
Anglo-Saxon. No force is
remarkable
in employing
more
non-Anglo-Saxon
migrants
than
others.
Data
are
not
available on
how
many
aborigines
are
employed
as policemen,
but
one
does
not
strike
many
of
them on the street.
There
are no great differences
among
forces in the
educational
qualifications
held by officers (Table 4).
New
South Wales is the State with most university
graduates
(O.3~
of the force).
Table
5
compares
the composition of police forces
by
religion. Because there
are considerable interstate differences in the religious composition
of
the general
population, percentages of policemen in a particular denomination are
compared
with
the
percentage
of
the total population in
that
denomination for
the
State concerned. Queensland has clearly the most Catholic police force
(36.1~),
an interesting situation in a State where 17 of the 18
cabinet
ministers
are
•Australian Institute of Criminology,
Canberra.
tllniversity
of
Queensland.
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