NCJ Number
131610
Journal
Criminology Australia Volume: 2 Issue: 3 Dated: (January/February 1991) Pages: 23-28
Date Published
1991
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Community policing in Australia is examined in terms of its basic concepts and the problems of implementing it in Aboriginal communities with emphasis on findings from research conducted in association with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into Racist Violence.
Abstract
Defining the concept of community is difficult, because it rests on a notion of social harmony and in reality may be used to enforce one group's views of moral or social behavior and to define the behavior of other groups as being outside community standards. This issue is particularly important with respect to Aboriginal areas which have received disproportionate allocations of police resources. Explaining such over-policing within the model of community policing is difficult. One test of the commitment to community policing would be the achievement of a substantial reduction in the numbers of police in such areas. In addition, the overreliance on paramilitary police and their extreme force levels in Aboriginal areas blatantly contradicts the model of community policing. Finally, some form of Aboriginal control over Aboriginal-police liaison programs and open confrontation of the issue of police violence are needed if community policing is to become a reality in these areas. Photographs, figure, table, footnotes, and 22 references