Police Roles and Techniques Summary

Serve society and the law to ensure a safe, secure, and orderly society.
Reduce violence, crime, and fear by providing a visible and responsive service.
Maintain public confidence through valued and trusted policing.
Ensure services meet community needs and high satisfaction standards.
Protect the community from road harm through presence, enforcement, and education.
Reduce crime, public disorder, and road trauma.
Collaborate with agencies to prevent terrorism and respond to threats.
Respond to calls for assistance, emergencies, and major events.
Coordinate multi-agency emergency management.
Keep the peace and preserve public safety.
Deliver a problem-solving approach to crime reduction through community collaboration.
Improve operational policing strategies in public safety and crime prevention.

Law enforcement: crime-fighting, dealing with offenders, witnesses, and victims (detection, investigation, apprehension, and prosecution).
Order maintenance and conflict resolution: managing minor offenses and restoring normality without arrests, including intervening in local conflicts and domestic violence incidents.
Crime prevention: creating and implementing proactive programs to prevent crime and reduce fear of crime (e.g., Neighbourhood Watch).
Provision of social services: helping those in need (e.g., emergency responses, referring people to social services).
Traffic management: managing road safety and reducing road trauma by enforcing rules and promoting safer practices.

Community support services: 51% (24-hour response to incidents, emergencies, and public events).
Criminal investigation: 31.3% (crime detection, investigation, forensic services, and dealing with alleged offenders).
Traffic and commuter services: 11% (patrolling roads and public transport, investigating crashes, detecting traffic offenses).
Judicial support: 7% (judicial and custodial services, prosecuting offenders, presenting evidence).

Rapid growth since the 1960s, now employing more individuals than public police forces.
Economic rationale: competing organizations absorb financial responsibilities for crime services.
Concerns raised: uneasy relationship with public police, extensive powers, lack of consistent standards.
Regulatory reforms: aim to improve ethical standards and reduce misconduct.
Expenditure & Personnel: Private security outnumbers public law enforcement in several countries.
Examples: Security at train stations, shopping malls, banks, residential communities.
Factors for Rise: Increase in easily stolen goods, growth of night-time economy, expansion of casinos, transnational character of private security, urban densification, modern terrorist threat.
Linked to user-pays market forces: private security acts in the private interest of its clients, raising questions on training, activities and accountability.

Public policing is predominantly the responsibility of state and territory governments.
Funding: Mostly from state/territory budgets with specific-purpose grants from the Commonwealth.
Expenditure (2016–17): Police services account for just under two-thirds of total justice system expenditure ( $10.9$ billion).
Organizational structures can include order maintenance, crime investigation, operations, state security, internal investigations, communications and IT, training, corporate resources, human resources, and corporate policy.
Allocation of resources indicates operational priorities.

72,680 staff employed by police services.
New South Wales had the largest police force, while the Australian Capital Territory had the smallest.
On average, there were $274$ operational police staff and $24$ non-operational staff per $100,000$ people.
Most involved in service delivery are sworn police officers who exercise police powers.

Traditionally male-dominated, with women entering from 1915.
Labor force participation of women has increased significantly, but remains unbalanced.
Women occupy only a third ( $33.2$ %) of all positions in Australian policing organizations (2016–17).
The higher the rank, the fewer women, although there are signs this is changing.
Many jurisdictions have targets to increase female police officers to $50$ %.
Issues in recruitment, retention, and resignation of women exist, including perceptions of policing as a ‘male’ occupation and discriminatory physical ability tests.

Shaped by penal colony origins, responses to Indigenous resistance, and the role in industrial disputes.
Resulted in a quasi-military hierarchical command apparatus and low social status.
Tensions exist between a modified military model and a community policing model.

Traditionally measured by crime-reporting rates and crime clear-up rates.
Limited success of police in ‘crime fighting’ despite increased resources.
Law-and-order responses are generally reactionary and fail to address fundamental causes of crime.

Traditional Policing Model
- Primary roles: Crime fighting; Reactionary techniques.
- Measure of effectiveness: Changes in crime rates and number of arrests.
- View of prosecution: A necessary and useful tool.
- Role of the community in policing: Police are the experts; the community plays an auxiliary role.
- Relationship with other organizations: Exclusionary and limited to other policing and regulatory agencies.
- Relationship with media: Used as a means of gaining increased resources and powers.
Community Policing Model
- Primary roles: Peacekeeping; Pre-emptive (problem-solving) techniques.
- Measure of effectiveness: Changes in police–community relations and peaceful restoration of order.
- View of prosecution: A measure of last resort reserved for the most serious cases.
- Role of the community in policing: Participatory decision-making structures in which the community plays a partnership role.
- Relationship with other organizations: Inclusive and involving multi-agency approaches and contacts.
- Relationship with media: Used as an educational and promotional tool to inform the public about nature of certain crimes.
Fusion of Policing Models
- Intelligence-Led Policing: Combines crime analysis with criminal intelligence and focuses police action on prolific offenders.

Community Policing: An organizational strategy that leaves setting priorities and the means of achieving them largely to residents and the police who serve in their neighborhoods.
Problem-Oriented Policing: An approach to policing in which discrete pieces of police business are subject to analysis, with the aim being to identify the key causes of the problem so as to develop a more effective strategy for dealing with it.
Third-Party Policing: Police efforts to persuade or coerce organizations or non-offending persons to take some responsibility for preventing crime or reducing crime problems.
Intelligence-Led Policing: A management philosophy aimed at achieving crime reduction by disrupting offender activity.

Multiskilling: Question on the capacity of police to deliver a holistic service with a broad range of responsibilities.
Rhetoric vs. Reality: Examining where resources are committed (proactive vs reactive programs).
The ‘War on Terrorism’: Assessing its impact on local, regional, and national policing practices.
Investigative Interviewing: Promoting non-coercive, information-gathering interview style (PEACE model).
Internationalisation of Policing: Increased focus on ‘evidence-based policing’ and global systems of law enforcement.