formerly National Police Research Unit

Community policing in Australia -

An appraisal: Working paper

Report Series No. 35

This publication was obtained from www.acpr.gov.au

COMMUNITY POLICING IN AUSTRALIA:
AN APPRAISAL
Working Paper

David H. Bayley

National Police Research Unit

Produced by the National Police Research Unit
298 Payneham Road, Payneham SA 5070

1986 National Police Research Unit

Table of Contents

COMMUNITY POLICING IN AUSTRALIA: AN APPRAISAL . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

WHAT IS COMMUNITY POLICING? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME PREVENTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

PATROL DEPLOYMENT FOR NON-EMERGENCY INVOLVEMENT

WITH THE PUBLIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

EXPANSION OF SERVICING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

ENCOURAGEMENT OF GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY FEEDBACK . . . . . 21

COUNTRY POLICING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

OBSTACLES TO COMMUNITY POLICING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

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Community Policing in Australia: An
Appraisal

'Community policing' is a phrase of art. Everyone talks about it but no one quite
knows what it means. In police circles world wide it connotes almost everything that
is worthwhile both old and new. That it has something to do with improved relations
with the public is generally understood. But what? In some quarters 'community
policing' is bitterly resisted as an attempt to deflect police from fighting crime through
catching criminals. At the same time, officers are just as likely to say, 'Community
policing? Why weve been doing that all along.' A British comedian recently
described community policing this way. 'Weve got community policing now. Youre
walking along a street and a police van pulls up, a squad of coppers jumps out, pins
you to the ground, and tells you the time of day.'

The purpose of this paper is to examine what Australia is doing under this ambiguous
but provocative heading. In particular, it will appraise Australias achievements in
'community policing' against the backdrop of world experience. Substantively, the
paper will describe recent developments in 'community policing' among Australias
several police forces. It will also pinpoint the impediments that recur in implementing
'community policing' programs. Finally, the paper will suggest choices that are likely
to confront Australia if 'community policing' is pursued.*

*I am grateful to the police forces of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and
Western Australia for generous assistance provided me during the summer of 1986. I regret that there was
not time to visit Northern Territory or Tasmania. This paper is not, therefore, a comprehensive picture of
community policing initiatives in Australia.

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What is Community Policing?

Because 'community policing' means so much and so little, it is essential that I make
clear what I mean by it. I dont intend to impose a personal definition. Instead, I will
suggest an operational definition based on international practice. What are the
boldest innovations that have recently occurred in policing under the rubric of
'community policing?' Since the phrase itself is new, it is fair to suggest that
'community policing' should be used to described novel rather than traditional
developments in policing. It is also fair to require that it be attached to real changes
and not rhetorical intentions. Based upon study in Canada, Great Britain, Japan,
Singapore, and the United States, I have found four recurrent elements in 'community
policing' meaningfully undertaken. They are:
(1) Community-based crime prevention;
(2) Patrol deployment for non-emergency interaction with the public;
(3) Active solicitation of requests for service not involving criminal matters;
(4) Creation of mechanisms for grassroots feedback from the community.

This is what I mean by 'community policing.' It is what 'community policing' looks

like when it reflects substantial changes in the standard operating procedures of world
police forces. Let us now see what Australia has done under each heading.

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Community-Based Crime Prevention

Community-based crime prevention involves encouraging and facilitating efforts by

the public to take protective measures on their own behalf. It grows out of the
realisation that the first line of defence against crime is not the police but potential
victims. The police cannot be everywhere, nor would one want them to be. Moreover,
likely additions of personnel and money, as many studies have shown, will neither
lower crime rates nor reduce the publics fear of crime.1 Personal involvement by
members of the public, therefore, is a sensible strategy for addressing both the
objective and subjective aspects of public security.

Neighbourhood Watch is the most familiar community-based crime prevention

program in the English-speaking world. In Asia, the Japanese have had active crime
prevention associations for many years and the Chinese had support groups called
'hans', consisting of groups of adjacent houses, for centuries.2 In addition to fostering
the development of self-defence groups, police often are willing to assess security
arrangements at residential and commercial premises. They have also developed
lectures, slide-shows, video-tapes, and printed materials aimed at teaching particular
segments of the public - such as school children, women, and the elderly - what they
can do to protect themselves from victimisation.

In Australia, Neighbourhood Watch represents the most visible and substantial effort
undertaken by the police to develop community-based crime prevention. Although
there is some argument on the point, the first program appears to have started in
Bunbury, WA, on a pilot basis in October 1982. The model for Neighbourhood Watch
in every other state, however, was developed in Victoria as part of the Frankston
Police/Community Involvement Program, 1980-84. Even the distinctive
green-and-white Neighbourhood Watch signs, now seen everywhere except Western
Australia, were designed by the Frankston coordinating committee. The Victorian
program was tried on a pilot basis between 1983-84. It was expanded state-wide
beginning in late 1984 and by the summer of 1986 covered 390 areas comprising
approximately 800,000 people, or roughly 20% of the Victorian population. New
South Wales inaugurated Neighbourhood Watch in March 1985 and one year later
had organised 435 areas covering 348,000 homes. South Australia launched a pilot
Neighbourhood Watch program in suburban Adelaide in 1985. It was expanded to
four other areas in mid 1986. Queensland began its pilot project in June 1986 in two
suburbs of the Gold Coast.

1
Pauline Morris and Kevin Heal, Crime control and the police: A review of research (London: Home
Office Research Study No. 67, HMSO, 1981), p. 18.
2
David H. Bayley, Forces of order: Police behaviour in Japan and the United States (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1976), chapter 7. Also William Clifford, Crime control in Japan (Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books, 1981).

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 Public perception of Neighbourhood Watch has been strongly favourable everywhere
except Western Australia. The WA media attacked Neighbourhood Watch in 1982 as
an organisation of police spies recruited to 'dob in' their neighbours. Lawyers called it
an invasion of civil liberties. Police organisers in other states now take pains to
confront these suspicions head-on, saying unequivocally at initial meetings that
residents are not being asked to 'dob in' but are only to report likely criminal events
so as to protect their neighbours. The purpose of Neighbourhood Watch, police
explain, is to enhance security in four ways:
(1) by marking valuable property with a personal number ('operation ID');
(2) by teaching people to report criminal activity and identify suspects;
(3) by educating residents about ways of increasing personal and household
security;
(4) by deterring criminals through posting Neighbourhood Watch signs at the
approaches to neighbourhoods and decals on individual houses.

In all states Neighbourhood Watch is initially organised by police personnel based in

specialised headquarters units, commonly in crime prevention sections. Areas are
usually organised at the request of residents, often upon demonstrating through
petitions that there is substantial community interest. Police then designate the
boundaries of the Neighbourhood Watch areas, convene organising meetings, assist
in the selection of Neighbourhood Watch leaders, train the leaders, and distribute
crime prevention brochures as well as decals and signs. Headquarters units tend to be
small, three and four officers in many cases. The philosophy is that central
involvement is needed at the outset to ensure quality control and standardisation, but
that it should quickly end, with responsibility for on-going supervision handed over to
designated police 'coordinators' or 'teams' in local police stations.

Australian police forces have not really had time to learn about the problems of
maintaining public enthusiasm and commitment to Neighbourhood Watch. American
research has shown that while residential burglaries decline substantially with
Neighbourhood Watch, the effect begins to wear off after a year and in two years
burglary rates return to previous levels. So far only Victoria has begun to grapple with
the maintenance problem. Prompted in part by police concern, its state
Neighbourhood Watch committee of civilian leaders is holding conferences for local
area coordinators to devise ways of maintaining grassroots enthusiasm. Western
Australia, too, is shifting the basis of Neighbourhood Watch from shires - Local
Government Authorities - to suburbs within shires in large measure because shires
were so large the public did not identify with them. Western Australias units are still
much larger than the 'zones' of 400 to 600 houses used in other states.

Although many Australians, even involved police officers, think that Neighbourhood
Watch is a copy of the American program, it is not. Several significant adaptations
were made to create what is now thought of as the Victorian model. First: the basic
unit of organisation is not a block of houses but 'zones' of 20-30 contiguous houses.
This is more like the neighbourhood crime-prevention units in Japan. Whether
Australian 'zones' and American blocks are much different in size in fact would have
to be determined through careful empirical study. But the intention clearly was to
make 'zones' smaller and more manageable than the basic units of organisation in the
United States.

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Second: Neighbourhood Watch in Australia has been formed from the outset into
interlocking levels of organisation. Although zones are the basic organisational unit,
Neighbourhood Watch is implanted in terms of larger areas of 400-600 homes
involving about two thousand people. Moreover, police organisers foresaw from the
beginning the need for coordination at higher levels of police command, such as
districts, regions, and states. Although each level of organisation is autonomous and
need not accept direction from higher levels, subordinate units have not been left to
shift for themselves, as they have been in the United States, with support, if at all,
coming only from the police. Australias Neighbourhood Watch program has created
a more complex structure of support which may help to solve the problem of
maintaining interest and commitment that has proven so troublesome in the U.S.
Western Australia has fallen in between on this point. It undertook initial organisation
on a much larger scale than the U.S. but did not provide for sub-units of contiguous
houses. It is now decreasing the size of these areas, but has still not created a
hierarchy of mutually supporting Neighbourhood Watch groups.

Third: greater care has been taken in Australia in the recruitment of Neighbourhood
Watch leaders. Although both countries screen volunteers for criminal backgrounds,
Australian police have been more active in cultivating responsible leadership. They
sometimes designate civilian coordinators or help to recruit a roster of qualified
volunteers from whom the public may elect zone and area leaders. In America,
leaders have tended to be self-appointed and when their commitment waned or they
moved away, the Neighbourhood Watch group has frequently been without a
vigorous successor.

Fourth: most states are requiring a minimum of one meeting a month by zone leaders
in order to plan programs and develop information for sharing with residents.
American Neighbourhood Watch groups often dont meet again after the initial
posting of signs and engraving of personal property. Compared with Australia,
Neighbourhood Watch in the United States hasnt really been an on-going program. It
is launched once and then left to invent its own future. To avoid 'decertification',
Neighbourhood Watch groups in Detroit, for example, which has one of the most
extensive programs in the country, need meet only once a year.

Fifth: newsletters from zone leaders to residents are a feature of Australias

Neighbourhood Watch. In addition to making crime prevention suggestions, they
update information about local criminal activity. This material is provided by the
police. Newsletters are not standard in the United States. Indeed, their use is so
controversial that the U.S. governments National Institute of Justice did a controlled
experiment in their distribution as part of a 'Fear of Crime' project in 1983-84.3

Sixth: Australian police have made more of a point of handing over continuing liaison
to operational personnel in local police stations than American police have done. At
least this is the intention of all programs; it remains to be seen whether effective
liaison is actually developed at police station levels. American Neighbourhood Watch
groups very often have had to fall back on headquarters staff in order to get support
for local initiatives.

3
The results of this extensive experiment are available through either the Police Foundation, Washington,
D.C., or the NIJ, Washington, D.C.

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 Seventh: Neighbourhood Watch has been cost free to residents in the United States,
while Australian participants are expected to contribute to the cost of engraving tools,
Neighbourhood Watch signs, mailing leaflets, and printing newsletters. In fact,
Municipal and Shire governments in Australia frequently help with such expenses, but
police coordinators still tell people at the beginning that they may be asked to make
small contributions to the organisations programs. Except in Western Australia,
start-up costs of Neighbourhood Watch on the police side have been borne by a
commercial insurance company, a practice that is also unprecedented in American
experience. I should say probably unprecedented, since American experience with
Neighbourhood Watch is so varied and generalisations about it, as with most aspects
of American policing, are apt to be wrong somewhere.

It should be reported unequivocally that wherever Neighbourhood Watch has been

tried in Australia, it has achieved its stated goal of lowering the incidence of
burglaries. As in the United States, rates for breaking and entering go down about
30% and for crime generally about 18%. Evaluation has been based on crimes
reported to the police, and sometimes it has been rough and ready. Western Australia
has had trouble generating crime statistics that coincide with shire boundaries. And
only Victoria and South Australia, to my knowledge, have attempted to measure the
publics fear of crime. Queensland intends to do so in its Gold Coast project.

Evaluation needs to be undertaken systematically, incorporating a wider range of

criteria than reported burglary and crime rates. Victimisation surveys, particularly,
would help test the utility of Neighbourhood Watch. Other questions should be asked
as well. Has more operational intelligence come to the police that is useful in
focusing enforcement activities? Have crime-alert networks through 'telephone trees'
increased the likelihood that fleeing criminals will be caught? Has the clear-up rate
improved because residents are supplying a greater quantity of more accurate
information? Are calls for police service from people involved in Neighbourhood
Watch generally more deserving of police attention, especially speedy attention, than
calls from the general public? Has crime in Neighbourhood Watch areas been
eliminated or simply displaced to adjacent territory? Has the effect of Neighbourhood
Watch on crime been more enduring in Australia than in the United States?

Neighbourhood Watch is an area of research that deserves to attract the attention of

professional criminologists in Australia. It is expanding so rapidly, however, that speed
is essential before clean baselines of comparison are obliterated.

Neighbourhood Watch is not the only community-based crime prevention program in

Australia. Perhaps the best known are the Safety Houses where children may seek
protection from strangers, especially suspected child molesters. They are part of the
catchy 'Stranger Danger' program featured in schools. Victoria, for example, where
the program originated, estimated that by 1985 250,000 children in 700 schools had
been covered, with 36,000 Safety Houses identified. Some police forces have also
offered to assess the security of residential and commercial premises and to advise
owners about precautions they might take. Queensland, South Australia, and Western
Australia, for example, have done security assessments since the mid-70s. How
extensive such programs are needs to be determined. It is interesting that such
appraisals, done in response to individual requests, pre-date Neighbourhood Watch.
In the U.S. they have usually been part of the package offered by the police through
Neighbourhood Watch.

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Neighbourhood Watch in Australia has not been used as a springboard for the
development of civilian crime-prevention patrols, unlike Japan and the United States.
Australian police are dead set against them, fearing vigilantism. Neighbourhood
Watch in Australia is strictly a static mobilisation of the community. In the U.S.,
although civilian foot patrols are rare, so-called 'CB Patrols' (civilian band radio) are
fairly common. They are very carefully monitored by the police, with members
admonished continually that they are never to intervene in any situation, not even to
get out of their cars. They are to view themselves as no more than mobile members of
Neighbourhood Watch.

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Patrol Deployment for Non-Emergency
Involvement with the Public

Approximately sixty percent of police personnel world-wide are uniformed police

officers assigned to 'general duties'. They represent the vaunted 'visible presence' of
the police that is supposed to deter crime. Studies done since 1970 in Great Britain
and the United States cast serious doubt on the deterrent value of both mobile and
foot patrols.4 Recognition of this lies behind the development of Neighbourhood
Watch. And the observation can be extended. Other studies have shown that
criminals are not only convicted but apprehended by the police most often on
information received from the public. In a phrase gaining currency in America, the
public should be viewed as 'co-producers' with the police of public order.

Furthermore, police everywhere perceive, although they are reluctant to admit, that
general duties officers are almost entirely reactive, their contact with the public
limited by and large to criminals and anguished victims. Police rarely get to know
undemanding, respectable people whose support for the police is automatic and
wholehearted.

The plain implication is that police must work more closely with the public,
especially since their own morale and sense of worth may rise in the process.5 It
makes sense to find ways of deploying police that will more effectively enhance
deterrence, solicit more active support for the police, and provide better intelligence
about potential criminal problems. The personnel best situated to do this are general
duties officers, or patrol officers as they are called in the United States. The problem is
that they are not viewed by their commanders, let alone by themselves, as having
time to devote to such activities. They are wedded to the crime-fighter image of the
police and cannot be diverted to public relations activity. And even when they arent
patrolling in order to act as a visible deterrent, they must be held in reserve for
emergency calls for police service. So for senior police managers who do believe in
'community policing', the name of the game becomes increasing non-emergency
contacts with the police, especially those that foster community crime prevention and
assistance, by capturing some of the time represented in general duties, more
narrowly patrol, assignments.

This solution becomes even more expedient if one accepts that many police forces
will experience periods of budgetary constraint in the future. If they decided to do
any form of community policing, where will the personnel come from to carry it out?
Once again, the answer is in the reservoir of general duties officers. Getting more for
less cannot be done without touching this most numerous speciality.

4
The key study was George L. Kelling, et al., The Kansas City preventive patrol experiment: A summary
report (Washington, D.C.: The Police Foundation, 1974).
For a review of all the research see Pauline Morris and Keven Heal, Crime control and the police: A
review of research (London: Home Office Research: Study No 67, HMSO, 1981).
5
Police Foundation, The Newark foot patrol experiment. (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1981).

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 Several re-orientation schemes for patrol officers, designed to unhook them from the
reactive emergency-radio net, have been tried in foreign forces. The most systematic
is undoubtedly the Japanese. Bucking the world-wide trend to mechanise patrolling,
the Japanese deliberately reinforced and reinvigorated their koban system. Most
Japanese general duties officers are deployed in fixed police posts called koban in
cities and chuzaisho in the country. I estimate that every Japanese city-dweller is
seven blocks on average from a koban.6 Both koban and chuzaisho are police mini
stations, more accurately described as offices for general police work - foot patrolling,
crime reporting, advising, interrogating, holding conferences, resting and responding
to emergency calls. Most importantly of all for our purposes, koban police officers are
expected to work with the local community to enhance safety. Each officer, for
example, must visit each residence within an assigned area to offer security advice,
ask about problems that might require police attention, ascertain basic information
about people living in the residence, and listen sympathetically to the publics views
about policing.

Responding to growing concern about crime and loss of contact with the community,
the Singapore police established Japanese-style koban, called Neighbourhood Police
Stations, on an experimental basis in 1983. Evaluated carefully after a year of
operation, the NPP scheme has now been adopted as the principal mode of
deployment for general duties personnel.

In America, Detroit created fifty-two 'mini-stations' in the late 1970s, which, after
several years of unsatisfactory trial, were given the exclusive task of developing
community crime prevention. So successful has this venture been that Detroit is
expanding the scheme at the present time to almost one hundred mini-stations. Santa
Ana, a city of 250,000 south of Los Angeles, created four community police-stations
staffed jointly by sworn officers and civilian aides. Houston and several other cities
are trying Japanese-style kobans, often calling them 'storefront' police stations. In all
of these facilities except Detroits, full-range general duties policing is done.

Even without redeployment into fixed bases, general duties personnel are being
placed so as to maximise interaction with the public. Foot patrols are gradually
coming back in the U.S., after having been almost wholly abolished since World War
II. Mobile officers are frequently required to park their cars for some time each shift
and to patrol on foot, maintaining contact through personal radios. Some patrol cars
are being used as foot-patrol bases. Officers, often two pairs, are assigned to a car and
directed to drive to several locations during their tour, get out, and do systematic foot
patrolling for specified periods of time.

Finally, ways are being devised to reduce the number of radio dispatches of general
duties personnel, thereby freeing them for proactive, community contact work. These
involve prioritisation of calls for service, more efficient referral to non-police auspices
by police telephone operators, and telephone crime reporting.

A final expedient is to adapt general duties operations more discriminatingly to the

needs of particular communities, incorporating community interaction as an explicit
objective. This can be done by devolving command upon more junior ranks, allowing
them to shift personnel assignments as they see fit rather than forcing them to follow a
program devised at headquarters. Houston created 'Directed Area Response Teams'

6
For a complete discussion of Japanese policing see Bayley, Forces of order (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978). Paperback edition.
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(DART) in several sub-divisions in 1984 whose officers, both detectives and general
duties personnel, were required to make their own policing plans for the areas under
their charge. In this way the cloth could be cut to fit the area, with all personnel used
for non-emergency contact with the public.

What has Australia done to make its general duties officers, especially those assigned
to street patrol and radio-tasking, more available to the public on a non-emergency
basis? Very little. In South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia boundaries of
police stations are being or have been re-drawn so as to coincide more neatly with
'communities.' This is being done under the banner of community policing. As nearly
as one can tell, no new modes of operation have yet occurred. Because operational
boundaries change periodically, it is little wonder that the effort is regarded with some
cynicism by older police officers. As one said, 'If this is community policing, its older
than the hills'. In South Australias case, reconstituting operational areas is explicitly
conceived as the creation of an infrastructure for community policing. But its
managers recognise that development in this direction will not occur automatically.
They hope for a period of dispersed experimentation, in which local commanders will
find new means for working with local communities to accomplish traditional
objectives.

Queensland will probably disband the mobile radio-tasking squad that operates
throughout Brisbane, redeploying its three hundred officers into police stations.
Unless more efficient use of these officers is made, however, it is doubtful that
significantly greater amounts of community involvement or crime prevention
mobilisation can occur. Someone, after all, has to handle radio calls for service.
Interestingly, Western Australia is contemplating doing the reverse. A dedicated
mobile patrol group devoted to radio-tasking has been set up on a trial basis in
Warwick, a northern suburb of Perth. Its purpose is to respond more effectively to
emergency calls while freeing station personnel for general enquiries and less
time-constrained engagement with the public. While the Brisbane and Perth programs
may be entirely justifiable in terms of local conditions, this would seem to be a case
where an opportunity for strategic planners in both forces to share experience would
be of great value.

Nor does it seem that significant changes in command decentralisation have occurred
either. This is a difficult judgement to make without close observation of command
practices in police stations. In theory, sergeants throughout Australia who command
shifts are supposed to be able to use general duties personnel available to them as
they see fit, in consultation with supervisory ranks. But do they in fact utilise this
opportunity? Do they more commonly implement a city-wide plan? Professor Jim
Munro, Criminology Research Council grantee, reports that in South Australia
Inspectors in the newly created police sub-divisions are now exercising a measure of
command responsibility that they did not utilise before reorganisation. They can, and
apparently are, beginning to devise their own patrol programs, changing deployment
to meet emerging needs, and shuffling assignments as required. If this is generally
occurring, then making the boundaries of general duties policing coincide with
relatively small communities has indeed facilitated adaptation of policing to local
circumstances, at least in South Australia.

The redeployment of foot patrols in Australia appears to me to be slight. Although

senior managers admit the value of appropriately sited foot patrols in terms of
community contact, they begrudge the loss of mobility. Still, foot patrols are making a

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 modest comeback, especially in shopping malls. Some forces, Queensland, for
example, are using radio cars as bases for foot patrols. Others are experimenting in a
limited way with small fixed bases. There are two 'shopfront' police stations in
Melbourne and eight in Adelaide. There is even less enthusiasm for them throughout
Australia than for foot patrols. Furthermore, there is little agreement on their function.
Adelaides 'shopfronts' are walk-in enquiry offices. Staffed by one officer, the police
are prisoners in them, afraid to close them for fear of disappointing the public but
unable to circulate more widely in the community. Victorias Broadmeadows is a
'shopfront' by virtue of its location in a shopping mall; its real purpose is to become
involved with community organisations throughout the district. Clearly more thought
needs to be given to the functions that dispersed fixed posts can usefully perform in
Australian policing.

Before substantial reorganisation of general duties work is done in Australia with a

view to increasing non-emergency contact, a great deal more study needs to be
undertaken of the texture of relations between police and public under different
deployment schemes. Foreign experience may or may not be relevant. For example,
does Australia tie up as large a proportion of its personnel in motorised patrolling as
America or Canada? If it does not, then general duties personnel in Australia may
have less time to draw on for a new kind of community contact. At the same time,
how intensive is patrol coverage in Australia and how busy are patrol officers? My
unscientific impression is that station areas are smaller in Australia than in North
America, probably comparable to Great Britain. If this is so then smaller patrol forces
in Australian police stations would not mean less intense coverage. Moreover, given
Australias low crime rate and dispersed housing, the workload of general duties
officers may be lighter than in major cities in other countries. On the other hand,
American officers are usually assigned to relatively small beats, while Australian
officers circulate throughout their station territory. Which scheme better facilitates the
development of detailed knowledge of the community? All of these variables -
numbers of personnel, workload, ratio of police to population and territory, and the
organisation as well as the mechanism of deployment - affect the quality of
police-public interaction. They are rarely analysed systematically in devising police
coverage.

And a final point needs to be made: changing deployment schemes may facilitate the
more effective use of general duties personnel, but getting individual officers to use
their new freedom for a different kind of contact with the public is a very different
matter. For the fact remains that the police will, and must, remain the primary
emergency service of modern society. Frontline personnel will feel this pressure,
which will make the task of enriching the texture of police-public contacts more
difficult.

There is one area of Australian policing where deployment for non-emergency

interaction with the public is happening in impressive fashion. I refer to country
policing. Country policing conforms so closely indeed to the four criteria I have set
forth that I will discuss it at length later.

Several Australian police forces are experimenting with a particularly interesting form
of labour-intensive, non-emergency deployment. Following the lead of Northern
Territory, they are assigning officers to secondary schools. Working usually in uniform,
the officers are directed to become accepted members of the school staff. The school
becomes their 'patch,' as a shopping centre might to a foot patrol officer or a

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housing-estate to a community-minded patrol officer. The schools officers
concentrate their attention on the small group of students with recurrent discipline
problems and involvement with the law. At the same time they give lectures on safety
and crime prevention, refer students and parents to appropriate counselling, and
generally advise the school community in all matters dealing with law enforcement.
Northern Territory began a pilot program of this type in Casuarina High School in
September 1984. It is now expanding the program to three more schools. New South
Wales has undertaken a similar experiment in one school in Sydney. Queensland
developed 'Adopt a School', which uses off-duty personnel on a volunteer basis to
achieve the same objectives. South Australia has an off duty program in eight schools
in Adelaide and hopes to expand it to schools in each of the new sub-divisions.

In discussing patrol and deployment strategies, three very different concepts have
become muddled in recent years. They are team policing, command decentralisation,
and community policing. These phrases are often used interchangeably, or it is
assumed that one leads to the other. In fact, very different matters are implied in each.
For example, one may choose to say that the creation of small, decentralised
commands creates police 'teams,' but 'team policing' has also been used to refer to
cooperative efforts across functional specialisations, especially between criminal
investigation and general duties. Team policing in the Unit Beat scheme in Great
Britain as well as in experiments in Dallas and Cincinnati involved this sort of
breakdown in specialisation. So it does in the Directed Areas Response Teams in
Houston currently. The point is that command can be devolved upon lower and lower
ranks within traditional functional units without increasing the cooperation between
them. Nor does team policing, in the sense of functional cooperation, require
command decentralisation. Similarly, both command and decentralisation and team
policing may occur without any change in the nature of relations between police and
the public. Small devolved commands may be as hostile to community involvement
as large commands, while joint teams of detectives and patrol officers may care as
little about community involvement as either group did when operating separately.

Granting, then, that the concepts are distinct, I suggest using 'team policing' to refer
to cooperation across police specialities, 'command decentralisation' to devolution of
decision-making within any command, and 'community policing' to the four activities
of community crime prevention, non-emergency deployment, expansion of servicing,
and grassroots accountability.

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Expansion of Servicing

Studies have confirmed what experienced police officers have known for a long time,
namely, that people bring all sorts of problems to the police for solution that have
nothing whatever to do with law enforcement or crime. Some estimates have placed
the proportion of requests unrelated to law enforcement as high as 80%.7 What is new
in policing, then, is not the public demand for such services but the police response.
Despite a strong current of opinion among police against doing 'social work', some
police forces are cautiously learning to make a virtue of this necessity, and even
encouraging the growth of it. They recognise that they cannot enlist the public in
support of law enforcement if they are unwilling to be enlisted by the public in its
pressing concerns, whatever they may be. This doesnt mean that police must become
an all-purpose social service. But they must learn to listen sympathetically to
non-criminal problems and be prepared to assist in constructing solutions. At the very
least they must become more expert in referring people to appropriate third parties.
Some problems, of course, may be so closely related to recurrent crime problems that
the police may decide to use their own resources to solve them, according to the
maxim that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The Japanese police have gone to great lengths to respond to non-criminal requests.
The koban system encourages this, as do foot patrols. Japanese police make hotel
bookings at night for people who need accommodation in an unfamiliar town; they
ring a gong over a loudspeaker near a large housing project to mark the correct time
in the morning and to warn small children in the evening that darkness is coming and
they should go home to supper; they warn off sales people who are too aggressive in
their canvassing; and they allow kobans to be used as postal addresses by itinerant
workers. Police in Detroit have recruited volunteers to help uneducated people
prepare tax returns and other government forms; they have assisted in filing
complaints with government agencies concerning neglected trash removal,
inadequate street lighting, and dangerous pedestrian crossings; and they have
supported appeals for the razing of abandoned buildings. Officers in Singapores
Neighbourhood Police Posts make their rooms available for community meetings;
Detroits mini-stations are used as headquarters for organising volunteer transportation
services for the elderly; and Japanese police telephone elderly and infirm people
living alone to check on their condition and reassure them that they are not forgotten.
Police in Singapore, Detroit, Houston, and Japan have walked door-to-door to elicit
suggestions about ways in which the police can help the neighbourhood enhance the
quality of life.

In Australia there is a good deal of outreach servicing, and it is growing. By and large,
this work is done by special squads. The oldest are the variously named juvenile
crime squads. More recently, Australias unique 'Blue Light Discos' have
mushroomed. Run by off-duty but uniformed police officers, they provide a safe place
for teenagers to dance. A modest admission of about $2.00 is charged, smoking and
drinking alcohol are prohibited, and music is almost always recorded. Victoria

7
For a review of this literature see my, Patterns of policing: A comparative international analysis, (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,1985) chap 5.

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 pioneered the movement. By 1986 it had over 135 Blue Light Discos which had
entertained over one million customers and raised $2 million for charity. Blue Light
Discos can be found in country as well as urban areas. Western Australia, for
example, has thirty three in the country and fourteen in Perth.

Victorias Police/Community Involvement Programme shows the very close

connection between servicing and crime prevention. It started in 1981 in Frankston, a
suburb of Melbourne known at the time for having high youth unemployment and
crime. Through collaboration with the community, the project registered push-bikes in
schools and lectured on cycle theft, worked with merchants to reduce shoplifting
during the Christmas holidays, and developed the prototypes for Neighbourhood
Watch, Stranger Danger, and Safety Houses. Although the projects programmes have
been adopted across Australia, the Police/Community Involvement Programme no
longer exists in Frankston. Instead, it has shifted to another district, where it is the
name given to a detached unit, located in the Broadmeadows shopping mall, that
does outreach activity for the police throughout the district. Its personnel try to
become involved with every group and organisation whose work relates to current or
potential problems of crime and disorder. It does not, however, organise
Neighbourhood Watch. In effect, the Police/Community Involvement Programme in
Victoria is a limited experiment in police liaison and servicing that happens to be
located in a shopfront.8

Australian police forces are aware of but have not yet responded to the needs of crime
victims. Although Victorias Victims of Crime Assistance League was formed in 1980 at
the instigation of the Police Commissioner, New South Wales is the only force that
has designated personnel to assist crime victims, largely by helping them to apply for
the compensation they are entitled to from government.

Liaison with groups within communities can be viewed as an expansion of servicing

or enhancement of accountability depending on what goes on. Although there are a
growing number of 'liaison' officers and committees in most states, their primary
function appears to be to smooth relations between police and the public by
mediating conflicts and telling the public what the police think they ought to know.
Most of the information involves crime-prevention. It is being translated into several
ethnic languages. The oldest and most developed of such operations is probably that
of New South Wales, which was established in 1979. This is a useful service for police
to perform adhering very closely to the core function of policing. It is reasonable to
expect that as liaison facilities are expanded, they will provide greater opportunities
for diverse groups to communicate their concerns, whatever they may be to the
police. By encouraging community feedback, the liaison activities of Australias police
forces may begin to incorporate the publics suggestions into police priorities. More
will be said later about this possibility.

Finally, Victorias 'Community Police Squads' are basically an outreach service of

police, directed at family crisis intervention and child maltreatment. They reflect a
well established concern with such problems in most police forces - which is another
way of saying that 'community policing' in the sense of servicing is not new. Victorias
organisation of it, however, is misleading. 'Community Police Squads' are an
adaptation of the former 'Womens Police Divisions' into which female officers were
put before the days of equal opportunity. Police documents in Victoria that appear to

8
Colleen Wooley, 'The Cop Shop with a Difference', Australian Police Journal (July-September 1985),
99-102.
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deal with community policing in fact deal with preferential hiring for women and
their non-discriminatory assignment and promotion. As late as 1986 'Womens Police
Divisions' still handled family problems in country districts, even though forty percent
of their personnel state-wide were men. Victoria has contributed to community
policing by giving special attention and resources to family problems, but it has
hardly served the cause by attaching the label to a specialised police function
associated with female police work. The same disservice was done for community
policing in Detroit when the personnel assigned to mini-police stations during the first
years of their operation were pregnant females, convalescing men, and officers under
disciplinary suspension.

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Encouragement of Grassroots Community
Feedback

Australian police forces, like those of Canada, Great Britain, Japan, New Zealand,
and the United States, operate within a democratic political system. They are
responsible to freely elected governments and disciplined by law. By world standards,
Australian police forces are already subject to a high degree of community feedback.
Furthermore, although not described as 'community policing,' accountability has
been greatly enhanced during the 1980s by the establishment of police boards,
complaints tribunals or authorities, and ombudsmen with authority over the police. In
short, Australian police are not only highly accountable but have become appreciably
more so in the recent past. These are notable achievements.

What 'community policing' may add to the democratic mix is provision for feedback
from the community at the grassroots and directly rather than through representatives.
Police forces in Japan and the United States have found that when they appeal to the
public for assistance in various endeavours, they must be prepared to listen in their
turn to the publics suggestions about the police. If the police invite the public to a
party, they cant do all the talking and expect it to be fun for everyone. Police are
discovering at Neighbourhood Watch meetings, for example, that people may be
frightened by burglaries, robberies, and muggings, but they are also concerned about
the more common events of vandalism, rowdy youths, derelicts sleeping in doorways,
'punks' playing loud music on buses, and screeching motorcycles late at night.
Serious crime is only one manifestation of insecurity, and not the most pervasive at
that. Police are finding that they have to adapt their operations to such conditions if
they want to persuade the public to provide information about more serious forms of
crime.

Grassroots feedback means that the police listen to the public and like it. It is the
exact opposite of public relations, which means police talking to the public so the
public likes it.

Detroits district police captains meet monthly with a community liaison committee;
the chief and top brass meet every two months with a city-wide crime prevention
steering committee. In Singapore, Inspectors commanding Neighbourhood Police
Stations attend all meetings of the Residents Councils of the enormous high-rise
housing blocks that dot the citys landscape. One Inspector told me in 1984 that he
met regularly with nine civic groups. OICs of Japanese police stations spend most of
their time meeting with community groups, ready to listen to their comments and
suggestions.

The major development of this sort in Australian policing is the creation of liaison
officers, often working through designated liaison committees, for a variety of
community groups, most of them ethnically defined. All states seem to have liaison
committees for Aboriginals. Most of these committees appear to be lodged at state or
regional levels, although occasionally liaison officers for aboriginals are appointed in
police stations. States are cautiously feeling their way in the creation of designated
grassroots liaison officers, partly because of the sensitivity of the operation and partly

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 because of personnel costs. Other groups are also considered important for the police
to meet with, depending on local circumstances. In addition to ethnic groups, New
South Wales and Victoria have liaison programs for gays. Victoria even has one for
lawyers. In almost all cases, these activities are handled by omnibus police/
community relations bureaus, branches, or units. Information about the vitality of
liaison, especially the willingness of groups to speak candidly and of the police to
listen and respond, is not available. It is a topic that deserves to attract research
attention.

The gap in Australias feedback network is with local citizens not affiliated with
'problem' groups. Compared with Britain and the United States, Australia lacks a
tradition of local community access to police decisions. Historically policing has
been organised in Australia by states. While this has enormous advantages in several
ways, especially in standardisation and coordination, it has left the adaption of
policing to local needs wholly in police hands. For this reason John Avery, now
Commissioner of Police in New South Wales, suggested in his book Police - Force or
Service (1981) that 'Community Consultative Councils' should be established in every
police district and the Committee of Inquiry (1985) into the Victoria police
recommended creation of 'local liaison committees at police station level.' So far,
nothing along these lines has been created anywhere in Australia.

The greatest potential for vigorous grassroots input into policing is represented in the
growing Neighbourhood Watch network. As already noted, in Australia
Neighbourhood Watch has had more complex organisation than in America, in the
hopes of making it more enduring. Its area committees, which often meet monthly,
are attended by police officers from local stations and are a natural occasion for frank
discussions of crime problems, police activity, and security needs. In other words,
Australias police forces have created a community-based crime prevention system
that is so well constructed and potentially powerful in terms of community sentiment
that the police may not dare turn a deaf ear to its considered judgements. Police
coordinators in police stations already report that Neighbourhood Watch committees
are willing to give their own assessments of local law enforcement needs and to ask
the police what they are doing about them. In the future, grassroots accountability
with respect to local police decisions may grow quietly and informally in Australia
within Neighbourhood Watch rather than under the glare of politically generated
legislation. This is undoubtedly wise. American and British experience over the past
twenty years suggests that the police will fight tooth and nail against mandated local
supervision, but will accept it when it is coupled with the mobilisation of
communities in crime prevention. Police creation of Neighbourhood Watch in
Australia may be like climbing on the proverbial tigers back, but it may turn out not
to be such a bad ride after all. Here again is where careful research into the texture of
grassroots relations between the police and the public would serve Australia well.

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Country Policing

Community policing already exists in Australia. It exists in the smaller country police
stations. Country policing in every state incorporates superbly at least three of the four
distinguishing features of community policing that I have specified: namely,
deployment for non-emergency interaction, encouragment of non-emergency
servicing, and grassroots feedback. The sole exception is community-based crime
prevention. Rural communities have not been organised formally against crime,
probably because crime is comparatively rare in country areas and people dont feel
the need to take special precautions. Moreover, country police officers work so
closely with communities, as we shall see, that there is no real separation between
enforcement and prevention, as there is in cities. Deterrence through arrest is very
visible in rural areas and police handle disorder as much through counselling and
mediation as through enforcement of law.

The essential difference between country and city policing was incisively summed up
by one country officer as follows: 'In the country we police people; in the city we
police crimes.' City police speed in and out of incidents, enforcing the law or not as
situations warrant. They rarely know the people they meet and they hardly ever see
them again. Immediate circumstances define their relations with people. Country
police, on the other hand, are guided by their knowledge of the people involved, the
expectations and resources of the community, and an estimation of future
consequences. Their decisions are not shaped solely by law and exigency.

Another officer remarked to me that policing in the country was more teaching than
law enforcement. Police officers, especially when newly arrived in a town, 'sort out
the town.' This means establishing through discussion and action what behaviour they
will tolerate and not tolerate. Understandings are worked out with segments of the
population, like publicans, youths, chronic drunks, Aboriginals, and itinerant workers.
Serious crimes, of course, are treated as they would be elsewhere. But since they are
rare, most attention of country officers is focussed on public order matters, such as
drinking, fighting, noise, rowdyism, and traffic regulation. These understandings are
built up through countless talks, chats, and discussions, not by the cold example of
summonses and arrests. Police officers in the country embody propriety and morality,
not just law, and feel free to talk in those terms.

It follows that country policing reflects a discriminating adaptation of law to

circumstance. A country officer can do whatever he thinks is required, unconstrained
for the most part by departmental plans. Although most officers try to keep their
stations open for several hours each day, they can close them if they wish, go off on a
tour of outback stations, patrol main roads, make enquiries, or talk to people as they
please. Command decentralisation in country areas has devolved as far as Senior
Constables, with senior officers not at all anxious that the Senior Constables do not
handle the responsibility well. Being ones own police force is precisely what makes
country policing attractive to police officers. They all complain about the difficulty of
re-adjusting to a hierarchical command situation when they are reassigned to cities.

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 Country police officers are involved in everything. So complex is their role that the
dividing line blurs between being a police officer and a private citizen. So,
consequently, does the notion of 'servicing.' In formal terms, country officers
represent the government generally for the people of the area - collecting insurance
payments, testing for and issuing drivers licenses, acting as public trustee for wills,
paying unemployment benefits, issuing permits for the transportation of livestock,
recording births and deaths, processing complaints about government housing, and
paying emergency relief to the destitute. Some of these services, like drivers licences
examinations, are offered at remote homesteads away from police stations. Police
officers are not faceless officials administering regulations. They are familiar
neighbours who are willing to help people understand essential forms, rules, and
testing materials, and to lead them through the red-tape step by step. Informally, they
participate in sporting clubs, cultural events, holiday celebrations, the Parent and
Childrens Association, youth activities, and the recreational life of the community,
including the indispensable pub. They visit far-flung sheep and cattle stations, taking
out fresh supplies of milk, a months worth of newspapers, or simply the solace of
companionship. In short, servicing is not something country police contrive to do; it is
an inseparable part of daily life.

Finally, feedback from the community is ready and acute. It is part and parcel of the
process of 'sorting out the town,' through which decisions about the character of
policing are made. But it extends to judgements about the performance of the officer
as well. Country police officers are keenly aware of always being in the public eye
both on and off duty. An erring officer can get lost in a city; he cannot in a country
town. Moreover, word quickly filters back to headquarters. Country people gossip,
and the attentive commander can easily determine whether his officer stands well in
the public eye. If the officer does not, his effectiveness is curtailed. People will not
provide the information necessary for anticipating trouble, resolving order problems,
and solving crimes. Community support in a country town is not an abstract matter. If
push comes to shove in the life of a country cop, backup is usually a long way away.
The officers only real support in times of emergency are the people of the community
who will back his play, whether its a pub brawl, search of remote areas, or
investigating reports of firearms discharges in a public park.

The essential elements of community policing are well understood and fully
implemented already in Australia. They do not have to be invented. A significant
portion of police officers have experienced them already first hand. The challenge for
Australia is to explore whether any of that lore can be transferred from the bush to the
cities.

I should add that intensive study of country policing in Australia is certainly needed in
order to determine conclusively whether my impressions of its congruence with
community policing is correct. There is undoubtedly great variety in country policing.
It would be important to study the effects upon country policing of community size,
personnel numbers, isolation, economic base, operating style of officers and so forth.

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Obstacles to Community Policing

I see four serious obstacles in Australia to the growth of community policing in the
sense discussed.

First: there is no clear idea what community policing means. The term is used so
variously that it has almost no hard content at all. It is an invocation rather than a
prescription. Listening to senior officers, one would think community policing was
fully implemented in Australia already. They have trouble, however, citing specific
programmatic initiatives, apart from public relations campaigns to improve the police
image. In South Australia, for example, community policing means Neighbourhood
Watch and reshaping geographical areas of command. Victoria confuses community
policing with dealing with the problems of women and children. Western Australia
believes that an important element of community policing is allowing officers of all
ranks to talk directly to the media.

All forces fail to distinguish community policing from public relations. The confusion
is compounded organisationally. Most states have recently created omnibus public
relations offices incorporating traditional media management with crime prevention,
ethnic liaison, and public education. Western Australias Community Affairs Bureau,
for example, includes crime prevention, traffic safety, and community education. The
Public Relations office in Queensland covers public relations and crime prevention.
The Community Relations Bureau of New South Wales includes crime prevention,
media relations, and publications.

Certainly community policing should produce a more favourable image of the police.
But if community policing means changing the public without changing the police, it
is only trendy window-dressing. This is why I have insisted throughout this paper on
measuring community policing against substantial changes in police organisation and
behaviour. Police forces need to do both public relations and community policing,
but if they cant tell the difference they shouldnt be surprised if the public cant
either.

Second: there is no sense of strategic urgency about community policing. To most

police officers, community policing is not vital to the achievement of objectives. It
represents 'soft' policing, extraneous to the 'hard' work of protecting people and
catching criminals. Community policing is seen generally as an expensive add-on,
irrelevant to the main purpose and siphoning off scarce resources for dubious
massaging of the public. Officers involved in community policing activities feel this
disdain acutely. They know they are viewed as misfits, incompetents, and the walking
wounded. Feeling beleaguered within the police establishment, they exhibit an
uncommon dedication, a 'born again' quality of having seen what policing should
really be like.

This sharp division of opinion is no-ones fault. Officers engaged in the traditional
police roles of patrolling and investigating crime are no less dedicated than those
doing community policing. The problem is that community policing, partly because it
has become such a slogan, has so far failed to demonstrate its utility in ways the

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 generality of police can understand. Until this kind of case can be made and
supported with evidence, community policing will swim upstream. Tragically, for the
same reason it may fail to attract the resources, especially of human talent, that are
necessary for developing its potential.

Third: resources are scarce and Australian police forces are going to have to learn to
do more with less. The fact that every Australian police force was under authorised
strength in 1986 was the most commonly cited brake on the development of
community policing. Easy enough to say that community policing may save resources
in the long term, but difficult for commanders to test in the face of continual requests
for more personnel from operational officers and the police unions. Given this reality,
community policing is likely to be limited to relatively small headquarters units rather
than penetrating the operational activity of field commands.

Fourth: a formula is lacking for incorporating community policing into the traditional
activities of policing, especially the work of general duties officers. Community
policing will remain a minor speciality of policing until someone can figure out how
general duties officers can further its goals within their operational activity.
Community policing is likely also to remain unconvincing to the public until they can
perceive a quantitative difference in uniformed policing. Moreover, the goodwill and
support available through community policing may not be available to operational
personnel if it remains an add-on activity. 'Because responsibility has been placed
with a specialist unit,' as Inspector David Smith has said, 'to a large extent it rests
there'. This abrogation of responsibility by operational policing leads to specialist
units becoming, in effect, a cosmetic buffer zone between the police and the public.9

The point is that although the solution is obvious - operational personnel doing
community policing - schemes must be devised that meet traditional police
responsibilities while incorporating new tasks. These are bound to dislocate standard
operating procedures - affecting modes of deployment, supervision, relations among
specialists, evaluation of individual performance, allocation of work time, and
handling of incidents. Hard thinking will have to be done, and open-minded
experimentation, before such extensive changes can be confidently made.

9
David Smith, 'Current Perspectives in the Management of Police Community Relations', (Unpublished
paper, November, 1984), p. 10.

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Conclusion

With respect to the four aspects of community policing stipulated, the record is
uneven at the present time although interest across the forces is intense. Australian
police forces have done most in the areas of community-based crime prevention and
developing of servicing for special clientele. On the other hand, community policing
has barely touched traditional operations. Minimal re-deployment of general duties
personnel or reorientation of their activity has occurred. Community policing remains
a small but growing specialist activity. Finally, grassroots feedback is selective and
episodic. The only explicit mechanism for it are the various liaison officers and
committees. Feedback appears to have little impact on local police practices, except
in response to crisis. Whether Neighbourhood Watch will provide a vigorous
mechanism for grassroots accountability remains to be seen. The promise is certainly
there.

All in all, this is a creative and fertile period in Australian policing, and there is every
indication that innovation will expand. Australian police forces are alive to the
rhetoric of community policing and are beginning to explore its implications.
Resistance is substantial however, and community policing has been made
acceptable by focussing on the mobilisation of the public in support of the police and
separating community policing from traditional operations.

My suggestions for further development of community policing are as follows:

First: Australian police should not commit themselves to any new schemes, however
fashionable, until they have been tried out and shaken down in small-scale
experiments. The utility of new ventures needs to be demonstrated not just to the
public and its elected representatives, but even move importantly to personnel within
the police who will be asked to staff them. Considering the scale of state police forces
and the comparatively low crime rates, there is no reason why new ventures cannot
be tried on a selective basis. Considering the accumulating evidence showing that
traditional strategies are not as useful as had once been thought, Australian force
commanders might consider the comment of Patrick Murphy, former Commissioner of
Police in New York City: 'Police administrators can be pretty sure that whatever they
do wont make the situation worse.'

Second: the police must carefully evaluate both innovations and standard practices.
Community policing is not a panacea. Features that work in one place may not work
in another. There is no point in slavishly copying what other countries have done
simply because it is called community policing. Each of Australias forces must find
out what is appropriate and feasible for it. Then they should pool experience, so each
force does not have to reinvent the wheel. Evaluation does not require fancy
controlled experiments. Forces do need to work out, however, what they specifically
hope to gain from new ventures and to assess the sorts of information needed to make
judgements about them. Much of this information may be available within
management systems already, or could be made so with effort.

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 I firmly believe that while community policing may have benefits that do not show up
in customary police statistics, and will therefore require new techniques for
measuring, community policing must be evaluated in terms of traditional police
objectives, namely, the protection of life and property. Community policing does not
entail changing the historical purpose of the police. It represents a new way of more
effectively achieving traditional goals. Unless this point is accepted, and the
demonstration carried out, community policing should not be touted as the wave of
the future.

What is lacking, therefore, in Australia, as well as in police forces throughout the

world, is not a commitment to community policing but a willingness to explore its
possible advantages.

Compared with many forces in the world, Australia has an unusually favourable
environment for re-examining policing. Its forces are large enough to ensure quality
control over wide areas, to provide attractive paths for career development, and to
develop a variety of expertise within the organisation. At the same time, there are not
so many forces that they cannot easily share experience. Furthermore, crime is
manageable in Australia. It is not perceived to be a crisis, as it is in the United States.
Crime and criminals have not yet overwhelmed the systems capacity to respond.
Even more important, criticism of the police is relatively restrained by American
standards. Although police officers complain as usual about media unfairness, public
opinion surveys repeatedly show that the police are highly regarded.

Policing in Australia, by and large, has not become politicised. The political
atmosphere is benign, in contrast to the situation in Britain. Furthermore, police
managers in Australia are well informed about international developments. They are
not threatened by new ideas, although they are not convinced that community
policing is more than this years slogan. Lastly, experience with country policing
provides a vital fund of knowledge that Australian police forces can draw on readily.
Community policing, if that is what is wanted, is not an alien importation. It is as
Australian as the wattle.

Altogether, then, Australian police have made a bright start in community policing in
a short time. There is every reason to expect that the next few years will see
significant innovation, even though that may not involve all aspects of what passes for
community policing elsewhere.

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