NCJ Number
192675
Date Published
2001
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This paper examines how police power in Australia is changing and why, and whether it is becoming more or less accountable in the process.
Abstract
The paper addresses specifically police powers and law and order politics, drug law enforcement, police management philosophies, and global integration. It also examines some conflicting objectives evident in such areas of police work as illicit drugs and police-community relations that make policing more uncertain. In addition, it probes the implications for greater accountability and transparency in new managerial approaches, and questions whether the citizen in a democracy can be equated with a customer in the marketplace. Police power in Australia is being challenged as well as extended. "Policing by consent" has been the hallmark of police legitimacy in Australia for the best part of 200 years. The changing composition of Australian society, new geopolitical agendas, and new cultural attitudes towards political authority have made the idea of "consent" more elusive and contested. Conceptions of social order and law enforcement priorities have diverged in response to such challenges as transnational crime, the quest for personal identity, and generalized feelings of insecurity. Crime is increasingly an issue of international relations, requiring a range of new structures and methods to combat its apparent menace to societies around the globe. Table, notes, references