Reviews
| Author | P.A.J. Waddington,Nigel Stobbs |
| Published date | 01 December 2005 |
| Date | 01 December 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1375/acri.38.3.425 |
| Subject Matter | Reviews |
425
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 38 NUMBER 3 2005 PP.425–428
REVIEWS
Fair Cop: Learning the Art of Policing
J.B.L. Chan,with Chris Devery and Sally Doran
(2003) Toronto,Canada: University of Toronto Press
Janet Chan has deservedly achieved an international reputation for high-quality
research on police reform. The laboratory for conducting this research has been the
trials and tribulations of the New South Wales (NSW) police, which was racked by a
succession of scandals that led to fundamental reform in the early 1980s. Professor
Chan’s earlier publication, Changing Police Culture (1996), charted the course of the
reform agenda implemented by Commissioner Avery. It was a penetrating, if salutary,
analysis: Chan convincingly argued that reform could not be introduced in isolation
from the social and cultural conditions in which policing occurred. The colonial origins
of the NSW police and the society they serve still makes themselves felt, especially in
the relationship between police and Aboriginal people. Reform is frustrated by such
deeply entrenched structural relationships and cultural understandings.
In this volume Chan gets up close and personal to study the training of new
recruits in the reformed NSW police. Using a complementary combination of
quantitative and qualitative methods, she and her collaborators followed a cohort of
recruits through their training at the academy and through their first year of opera-
tional duties as police officers. Again the product is penetrating and salutary.
The reform agenda had a critical impact on the training of recruits. The force
was officially ‘committed to fighting corruption and to introducing more account-
able, community-based police practices’ and it aimed to do that by improving the
calibre of its personnel through selection and training. ‘The service committed itself
to attracting more women and more people from ethnic and Aboriginal communi-
ties. Changes were introduced to recruitment criteria such as educational and physi-
cal requirements.’ The new policing training system was ‘intended to subvert
traditional policing models and values. It was instituted explicitly as part of an
agenda to sweep away traditional ‘crime-fighting’ models of policing … and to
establish community-based policing’. The new system was introduced in 1988. In
the mid-1990s — by which time the training regime should have become reason-
ably established — it was examined by Professor Chan and her colleagues.
For reformers, the good news is that recruits seemed to have been a fine bunch
of people, with a significant representation of women and ethnic minorities, albeit
that there was scope for more equal representation. The training staff were also
dedicated to the transformation of the NSW police and had imbibed deeply at the
well of ‘community policing’. They saw their role as equipping recruits with the
requisite attitudes and beliefs to promote the aims of the reform agenda. The first
phase of training, in which recruits were instilled with the values of professional
integrity, seemed to be reasonably well received. A dose of social science and ethics
certainly seemed to be good for their souls.
The bad news is that this was not destined to last. After a brief exposure to life
on the streets recruits returned to the training academy deeply sceptical of the
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