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Editors --- "Strategies for the future" [1999] AUFPPlatypus 26; (1999) 64 Platypus: Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Article 8


Strategies for the future

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Michael Beattie is Commander in Charge of Corporate Services for the ACT Region and is responsible for ACT Professional Development, Corporate Services Research and Policy, Corporate Resources, and Media and Public Information. He has been involved with law enforcement for 21 years, serving in the areas of community policing, national operations, finance and administration and training.

The following paper, an edited version of a presentation he made recently while a Visiting Police Fellow at the Australian Institute of Police Management in Sydney, addresses some strategic issues in Australasian policing.

There are several major issues which will have an impact on the outlook for law enforcement in the next century but among the most crucial in developing appropriate strategies is that of interrelationships.

Any forecast of the policing environment must take into account the fact that law enforcement does not operate in a vacuum from other social services.

The concept of zero tolerance policing is one example which can be used to illustrate such interrelationships.

While you may give increased resources to police to implement this approach, the financial and other resource consequences on downstream agencies such as courts and prisons can be quite extreme. In developing or analysing any possible strategic direction, it is important that these links are not overlooked and that the impact of the external environment on organisational processes are taken into account.

The external environment

Socio-economic factors

Various authors provide different views on what the future may hold in terms of changing social patterns. However, there is little doubt that our population is aging, is more culturally and socially diverse and perhaps generally better educated. Of growing concern is a widening gap between the ‘haves' and the ‘have nots' (economic inequality).

Such a gap, perhaps including a pool of long-term unemployed, has the potential to produce an increasing state of anomie in society, and hence, considerable social unrest. The widening economic gap between countries, and world-wide economic instability (such as that which occurred from the Asian financial crisis) pose considerable risk to social and political structures and hence place pressure on policing agencies.

Patterns of crime

Commissioner Mick Palmer outlined in addresses recently two broad areas of changing criminal patterns, which can be described as local and international. Local includes the traditional areas of crime, property, fraud, offences against the person, street offences and unfortunately local drug-related offences.

Changing patterns of local crime, whether real or perceived, pose considerable challenges for policing, particularly in light of how to ensure community expectations are met in an environment of increasing budget restraint.

The increasing growth of technology and the removal of trade and other barriers has seen an associated increase in international or transnational criminal enterprises. Again, Commissioner Palmer wrote recently that "in a number of countries in our region, the financial sector is on the verge of collapse, unemployment is rising dramatically and signs of social unrest are increasing".

"In one critically important Asian country, banks are reputed to have accumulated unredeemable loans amounting to more than $US1 trillion, of which, according to reports, some 40 per cent was loaned to groups or corporations with organised crime connections. When attempts were made to redeem some of these loans, threats and violence, including murder, were made or carried out against banking and corporate executives."

The bottom line to all this is that the strategic link between law enforcement and political stability is becoming increasingly more evident and necessary. In fact it is interesting to note the increasing use of police in peacekeeping roles. In recognition of the fact that to achieve long term economic and political stability it is necessary to establish a properly structured justice framework, police are being used more often in preference to the traditional defence support response, such us they were in our roles in Cambodia, Haiti, and Mozambique.

There are also new crimes emerging, including environmental crime, computer and internet crime and possibly previously unheard of crimes such as the trade in human body parts.

Finding solutions to these issues is not easy and is compounded by increasing pressure on police resources. At a community policing level, increasing demand on limited resources has meant that the role of police is being redefined. With police being unable to provide the traditional level of service, competitors have entered the marketplace and there has been a burgeoning of private security agencies.

Government departments and large financial institutions also have responded to reduced police capacity by creating their own investigational units. The creation of agencies such as the National Crime Authority and the various Independent Commissions have also in part occurred as a reaction to a perceived inability of traditional police responses to deal with an increasingly complex world.

The traditional response from our society to problems, including crime, in many ways has been to introduce and amend legislation. This trend will no doubt continue with an accompanying risk that the role of police will be further defined through the creation of codified powers, roles and responsibilities.

However, policing in many ways is its own worst enemy. As Deputy Commissioner Adrien Whiddett recently said "those of us in enforcement, regulation or compliance work are burdened with bureaucratic baggage, including petty jurisdictional or inter-agency rivalries, whereas criminals are free and unaccountable in terms of protocols, conventions, law or formal alliances."

Mr Whiddett put forward that part of the solution is to develop cooperative arrangements between relevant agencies to "marshall our respective authorities and powers in tackling the more problematic facets of serious crime".

Organisational structures and work practices

The traditional police organisation has been characterised as being hierarchical, centralised, role and rank-based, and paramilitary in structure (command and control). Organisational reform has seen the emergence of flatter organisations, devolved responsibility and local autonomy, and team-based work driven by corporate values.

The role of a manager and leader also has subsequently changed. The autocratic style has been replaced by a management philosophy that considers that people are the most valuable asset of an organisation. Hence, people management skills have become increasingly important.

Changing work practices and a new style of organisation has also led to major reforms in human resource management. These reforms have seen dramatic changes in the way that people are recruited, who is recruited, how they are trained, developed, deployed, remunerated and assessed, including the introduction of such concepts as contract employment and loss of automatic tenure.

The need to reflect the community in terms of social and cultural diversity has also had an impact on human resource and management practices. These reforms too have seen subsequent changes in industrial relations and a move away from centralised union monopolies to individual work place agreements.

Although not often clearly articulated, there has been a change in people's views of working for a police agency. The traditional concept of working for the same organisation for life is not as immediately relevant as it was in the past.

The move to professionalise policing, particularly through the use of competency based learning and assessment, and the possibility of a national police registration model, will see a future where lateral entry and cross jurisdictional movement of personnel becomes the norm.

Changing expectations

The expectations of government and the community have changed considerably and can be broadly grouped into two main areas — that of trends in public sector management, and increasing politicisation (within the broad meaning of the term). Overriding and intrinsically linked to both is an increasing desire for greater accountability, disclosure and perhaps influence.

As society has become better educated and more socially aware, the desire of the community to be involved in the decision making processes of government has increased. This desire has been reflected within the increasing numbers of self interest and lobby groups. The capacity to manage this environment will become increasingly important for the police manager of the future.

Public sector management practices have seen considerable changes over the past 10 or 15 years. There has been a push for all government agencies to provide better information on performance outcomes against objectives, to improve accountability, and to manage budgets better. The early 1980s saw the introduction of program budgeting into the Commonwealth. This management by objective style has been replaced recently at the Commonwealth level by outcome based budgeting and accrual accounting.

This later style of management will pose considerable challenges for police managers, particularly with the associated purchaser provider model of service delivery and the concept of price. Within this environment, police agencies will be required to report performance against agreed outcomes at an agreed price. If the price is too high, or the outcome is not achieved, then the continued provision of the service is at risk.

This logic is further manifested in a growing push for agencies to identify those areas of their current services which are not core business activities, and which could be performed better or more cheaply by others, including the private sector. It is therefore becoming an increasingly competitive environment where traditional public sector management practices are being replaced by more business oriented commercial philosophies.

The way in which governments view police management is also changing. Traditionally, police management has viewed itself as being separate from the political process. There is a growing debate within the wider public sector about the increasing politicisation of the bureaucracy. Policing will not be immune from this debate. The question of the independence of the Office of Constable will become increasingly topical, and as mentioned before, codification of police powers and procedures could be an outcome.

Impact of technology

Any discussion about strategic directions would not be complete without mentioning the impact of technology. The speed at which new technology enters the marketplace is nothing short of remarkable. From my perspective the problems are not so much with new technology but the inability of law enforcement agencies to harness that technology at the same rate as does criminal enterprise; the inherent delays in providing learning opportunities for police in new and emerging technologies; and inadequate legislation to deal with new and emerging technological crimes.

Looking to the future

The rapidly changing external environment has placed considerable pressure on policing. As police agencies have struggled with these demands, new and vastly different styles of leadership, management and service delivery have emerged.

To be realistic, most of these changes have been externally driven. This perhaps, is a lesson in itself. Unless policing becomes more active in determining its own future, it will be determined by others.


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