Bias Crime Policing: 'The Graveyard Shift'

Bias crime is crime that is motivated by prejudice or bias towards an attribute of the victim, such as race, religion or sexuality. Police have been criticised for failing to take bias crime seriously, and there is a pressing need to understand the reasons for this failure. This article aims to address this gap by presenting the results of the first empirical study of bias crime policing in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). Drawing on interviews with the NSW Police Force (NSWPF), the study found that sustainable reform in this domain has proven elusive. This can be attributed to a number of key challenges including reporting, recording, identification, framing, community engagement and leadership. The lessons that emerge from the findings have important ramifications for all police organisations.

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title: Ten key developments in modern policing: an Australian perspective
abstract: In this paper we endeavour to isolate the top ten innovations and developments that have occurred in policing in the last thirty years. We consider that each of them brought about a new mindset, pattern or trend into contemporary police practice. We have focused our attention on the last thirty years because it is during this time that we have both maintained a keen academic interest in the field. While we have focused our attention on the way in which each has affected Australian policing, we are cognisant of the fact that many of them had their roots in other settings long before Australian policy-makers adopted or adapted them.

title: Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police
abstract: Aboriginal people are grossly over-represented in Australia's courts and prisons. Despite numerous inquiries, State and Federal, and the considerable funds spent trying to understand this phenomenon, nothing has changed. Indigenous people continue to be apprehended, sentenced, incarcerated and to die in prison. One part of this inexorable process is the behaviour of the police. Drawing on research from across Australia, Chris Cunneen focuses on how police and Aboriginal people interact in urban and rural environments. He explores police history and police culture, the nature of Aboriginal offending and the prevalence of over-policing, the use of police discretion, the particular circumstances of Aboriginal youth and Aboriginal women, the experience of community policing and the key police responses to Aboriginal issues. He traces the pressures on both sides of the equation brought by new political demands. In exploring these issues, the author argues that changing the nature of contemporary relations between Aboriginal people and the police is key to altering Aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justice system, and a step towards the advancement of human rights.

title: Ethnicity and Trust: Perceptions of Police Bias
abstract: This study explores trust in police among a university sample of ethnic minority youth in Sydney, Australia, specifically examining the degree to which police are perceived to be biased against respondents' own particular ethnic groups. Results from this university sample replicate those found in previous community studies. By considering more specific questions regarding perceptions of police bias, this study further reveals that young minority groups consider police to be biased against their own ethnic group significantly more than do Caucasian youth. However, both minority youth and the Caucasian majority believe that police target certain ethnic groups, and generally agree on the particular groups that they perceive are targeted by police. These findings imply that perceptions of police bias are not restricted to minorities.

title: Policing Diversity and Vulnerability in the Post-Macpherson Era: Unintended Consequences and Missed Opportunities
abstract: The ripple effects of the Macpherson inquiry were felt by police organizations worldwide. However, the points Macpherson was making were never to be limited to race, ethnicity, or cultural difference. Nonetheless, the policies and practices to emerge since the Macpherson report have taken race and cultural difference as a template for the development of an ever-increasing number of siloed responses to vulnerability in the policing process. In this article, we examine the essential need to depart from the historical and siloed framing of police–race relations. Instead, we argue that policies and practices should respond to vulnerability as a fundamental socio-cultural characteristic of all criminal justice encounters. After much public scrutiny, many vulnerable groups have now become the target of non-negotiable, precautionary protocols for police to abide by, in order to address the disadvantage caused by a variety of attributes (such as age, mental health, language). This siloed approach to diversity and the cultural awareness and quota models that emerged from the Macpherson recommendations are no longer adequate for the increasing differentiation of modern societies. We suggest that Macpherson’s recommendations, despite their success, have left in their wake a series of institutional artefacts that have ossified policing responses to diversity. As a more realistic template to address a wider understanding of diversity, we propose re-centring vulnerability as a ubiquitous characteristic of all criminal justice encounters through the use of Herring and Henderson’s framing of critical diversity (2011).

title: Policing in a Multicultural Society
abstract: Australia in the 1990s is a country of remarkable ethnic and cultural diversity, with more than 100 ethnic groups, speaking 80 immigrant languages and 150 Aboriginal languages (Castles et al. 1988: 25). More than one-quarter of its 17 million people were either born in non-English-speaking countries or the ‘second generation’ of those born in these countries (Jupp 1995). At the 1991 Census 265,459 people, or 1.6 per cent of the total population in Australia, identified themselves as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] 1994a: 5). Australia's ethnic diversity is, however, a relatively recent pheonomenon. At the time of European settlement in 1788, the continent had been inhabited by Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years. After that the number of Australia's original inhabitants declined dramatically, from nearly one million to about 80,000 by the 1930s, largely as a result of ‘disease, conflict and the disintegration of traditional society’ (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission [HREOC] 1991: 59). By the late 1940s, almost 90 per cent of Australia's population was of British descent. This was achieved through the White Australia Policy which discriminated against the immigration of non-Europeans and provided a system of assisted passage for British immigrants. Since the abandonment of discriminatory policies in the 1970s, however, Australia's population has become increasingly culturally diverse through immigration. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, only 18 per cent of immigrants to Australia were from the United Kingdom and Ireland, compared with 46 per cent in the early 1960s.

title: Perceptions of Police Legitimacy and Citizen Decisions to Report Hate Crime Incidents in Australia
abstract: This article examines the importance of perceptions of police legitimacy in the decision to report hate crime incidents in Australia. It addresses an identified gap in the literature by analysing the 2011-2012 National Security and Preparedness Survey (NSPS) results to not only explore differences between hate crime and non-hate crime reporting but also how individual characteristics and perceptions of legitimacy influence decisions about reporting crime to police. Using the NSPS survey data, we created three Generalised Linear Latent and Mixed Models (Gllamm), which explore the influence of individual characteristics and potential barriers on the decision to report crime/hate crime incidents to police. Our results suggest that hate crimes are less likely to be reported to police in comparison to non-hate crime incidents, and that more positive perceptions of police legitimacy and police cooperation are associated with the victim’s decision to report hate crime victimisation.

title: A Shared Global Perspective on Hate Crime?
abstract: The hate crime concept describes a set of actions that span the worlds of activism, policy, and scholarship and provides the basis for these actors to work together and open up the rule of law to communities that often exist outside its protection. However, there is huge diversity in current approaches across and within these worlds to recording, reporting, legislating against, and researching hate crime, which challenges the notion of a shared and global concept of hate crime. This article offers a framework that helps describe the processes and relationships that generate and refine national and international concepts of hate crime. In so doing, it starts to assess to what extent an internationally coherent approach to understanding and responding to targeted, bigoted violence has been achieved.

title: A Leap of Faith? Trust in the Police Among Immigrants in England and Wales
abstract: It is often assumed that immigrants in countries such as the United Kingdom will report lower levels of trust in the police. Immigrant communities are thought ‘difficult to police’, and minority groups frequently experience problematic relationships with police. Yet, there has been little empirical investigation of this issue in the United Kingdom. In this paper, data from the Crime Survey of England and Wales are used to explore the relationship between immigration and trust in the police. Results suggest that trust is higher among immigrants than among the UK-born population, although there is important variation by time since arrival and experience of policing. Trust in the police is also higher in neighbourhoods that have more immigrants. The paper concludes with some reflection on the nature of trust in the police.

title: Policing at the margins: fostering trust and cooperation among ethnic minority groups
abstract: Over the past few decades, Australia has become less dominated by White-European cultural groups and is increasingly characterized by racial and cultural diversity. This diversity brings many benefits, but it also poses challenges for governance. Authorities such as the police are faced with greater diversity in cultural norms, values, identities, and attitudes toward police and the law. This increase in diversity may therefore have implications for the ability of police to foster trust, obtain compliance, and encourage cooperation among certain groups. Procedural justice has been regarded as central to improving public trust and confidence in authorities. This paper will use survey data to examine the role that procedural justice policing can play in promoting trust and cooperation among ethnic minority groups living in Australia.

title: Perceptions of group value: how Australian transgender people view policing
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title: Fostering cooperation with the police: How do ethnic minorities in Australia respond to procedural justice-based policing?
abstract: Public cooperation with police is essential for the control of crime and disorder. Hence, understanding factors that shape public cooperation with the police is important. However, Australian and international studies show that police find it difficult to elicit cooperation from ethnic communities, this made difficult by the fact that ethnic groups display low levels of trust and confidence in the police. This study examines the role that procedural justice plays in fostering minority group perceptions of police legitimacy and their willingness to cooperate with police. Using survey data collected from 1204 Australian citizens, this study tests whether procedurally fair policing can enhance perceptions of police legitimacy and nurture cooperation among ethnic minorities in Australia. Findings reveal that procedural justice predicts views of police legitimacy more so than instrumental factors for both minority and majority group members. The results also suggest that ethnicity moderates the effect of procedural justice on cooperation; specifically, procedural justice is shown to be less effective for nurturing cooperation among ethnic minorities than majority group members. A group identity perspective is used to explain these findings. The findings also have implications for how the police can foster better relationships with ethnically diverse communities.

title: Justice from within: The relations between a procedurally just organizational climate and police organizational efficiency, endorsement of democratic policing, and officer well-being.
abstract: Recent clashes between law enforcement and the public have led to increased attention on policing strategies that build trust and motivate cooperation in communities through the application of fair procedures and decision-making. A growing body of policing research has highlighted that officers commonly report working within police departments that lack procedural fairness and that these intradepartmental dynamics influence officers motivation and behavior on the street. This study builds on this work by examining the influence of a procedurally fair organizational climate on officer’s organizational behavior, commitment to democratic policing, and well-being. Patrol officers and sergeants in a large urban police force completed surveys assessing their perceptions of their department, the communities they police, their views on different policing styles, and their well-being. Results showed that when officers were in a procedurally fair department, they were more likely to trust and feel obligated to obey their supervisors, less likely to be psychologically and emotionally distressed, and less likely to be cynical and mistrustful about the world in general and the communities they police in particular. More importantly, these effects were associated with greater endorsement of democratic forms of policing, increased organizational efficiency, and officer well-being. Taken together these results clearly support the utility of infusing procedural justice into the internal working climate as a means to improve police officer job performance, their well-being, and their relationship with the communities they police.

title: Ethnic Hate Crime in Australia: Diversity and Change in the Neighbourhood Context
abstract: Ecological theories of racially or ethnically motivated hate crime are largely derived from the United States, where racial segregation is highly pronounced. The extent to which these theories explain hate crime in more ethnically integrated countries is presently unclear. We focus on the neighbourhood characteristics influencing self-reported hate crime for 4,396 residents in a city experiencing growing ethnic diversity. We find that the neighbourhood antecedents of hate crime in the Australian context differ from those seen in the United States. While residents speaking a language other than English is a powerful predictor of incidents, neither residential mobility nor increases in in-migration are associated with hate victimization, and neighbourhood place attachment decreases the likelihood of victimization. Our findings suggest that ecological theories of hate crime derived from the United States may be limited in their applicability in multi-ethnic settings.

title: 'Hate crime' and the city
abstract: This book, from a leading author in the field, widens understanding of 'hate crime' by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse 'hate crime' as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. Aimed at academics and students of criminology, sociology, socio-legal studies and social policy, the book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. The analysis offered adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinising the balance struck by 'hate crime' laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.

title: Conceptual divides and practice synergies in law enforcement and public health: some lessons from policing vulnerability in Australia
abstract: The debates about how and whether law enforcement and public health share a policy and practice mandate are perplexing. Frontline practice indicates that this intersection is de rigueur, and that practitioners from both fields see no reason why they cannot work together beneficially. Indeed, police are as much public health interventionists as health practitioners are public safety facilitators. In this article, we identify the conceptual dissonance that continues to frame the debate about law enforcement and public health, and document the practical synergies that exist (and have always existed) in both fields. We suggest that the divide between law enforcement and public health is futile, and that the shared concept of vulnerability in policing, health and law can do much to foster better collaborative practices, policies and shared understandings.

title: Police occupational culture: classic themes, altered times
abstract: Understandings of police culture rely heavily on ethnographies conducted several decades ago. In these classic accounts, authors have identified recurring themes within police dispositions and practices over time and space. There have, however, been important developments within policing contexts, some of which could be expected to transform the cultural ethos that has long underpinned the police identity. This article draws upon ethnographic research conducted in an English police force to explore how much of the classic characteristics of police culture have survived the period of transition. It shows that the underlying world view of officers displays remarkable continuity with older patterns, and argues that police culture endures because the basic pressures associated with the police role have not been removed. In light of this apparent durability of cultural themes, the article calls into question the increasingly accepted view that orthodox conceptions of police culture no longer make any sense.

title: Self-legitimacy, Police Culture and Support for Democratic Policing in an English Constabulary
abstract: When do police officers feel confident in their own authority? What factors influence their sense of their own legitimacy? What is the effect of such ‘self-legitimacy’ on the way they think about policing? This paper addresses these questions using a survey of police officers working in an English constabulary. We find that the most powerful predictor of officers’ confidence in their own authority is identification with their organization, itself something strongly associated with perceptions of the procedural justice of senior management. A greater sense of self-legitimacy is in turn linked to greater commitment to ‘democratic’ modes of policing. Finally, we find that this sense of legitimacy is embedded in a matrix of identities and cultural adaptations within the police organization.

title: The fourth era of policing: Homeland security
abstract: American policing has been said to have gone through three eras: the political, reform, and community; and consists of four different models of policing: traditional, community policing, problem-oriented and zero-tolerance. With the tragic events of 11 September 2001, and the government's movement toward enhanced domestic security, the author argues that we have entered a new era in American policing and are witnessing the adaptation of a new style of policing, namely Homeland Security. Drawing upon the works of Kelling and Moore (G L Kelling and M H Moore in Perspectives on Policing No 4, Washington DC, National Institute of Justice, 1988; G L Kelling and M H Moore, in J R Greene and S D Mastrofski (eds) Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality? Praeger, 1991, pp 3–25) and Greene (J R Greene in Criminal Justice 2000: Policies, Processes, and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System Vol 3, 2000), the author advances their work to highlight what this new era and style of policing means for American policing.

title: Criminal Law as Police Power: Serious Crime, Unsafe Protest and Risks to Public Safety
abstract: This article considers the deepening of police power in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, criminal law. It analyses the combined effects of four recent criminal law regimes that not only give the NSW Police Force more powers, but also reflect the significant role of institutional police power and the pre-emptive logic of criminal law. We examine: the introduction of serious crime prevention orders; the introduction of public safety orders; investigative detention powers in relation to terrorist acts; and confiscation, forfeiture and search powers, and trespass offences that target protests. Drawing on the work of ‘police power’ theorists, we argue that these new regimes illustrate the centrality of police power to the criminal law rather than a deviation from a putative, ‘normal’ criminal law.

title: Qualitative Analysis: Practice and Innovation
abstract: Offering a detailed introduction to the practice of data analysis, this book is both user-friendly and theoretically grounded. Drawing on his extensive experience of qualitative research, Douglas Ezzy reviews approaches to data analysis in established research traditions including ethnography, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, alongside the newer approaches informed by cultural studies and feminism. He explains the difference between inductive, deductive and abductive theory building, provides a guide to computer-assisted analysis and outlines techniques such as journal writing, team meetings and participant reviews. This text is one of the first to treat computer assisted data analysis as an integral part of qualitative research. Exceptionally well written, this is a valuable reference for research students and professional researchers in the social sciences and health.

title: From Hate to Prejudice: Does the New Terminology of Prejudice Motivated Crime Change Perceptions and Reporting Actions?
abstract: Official definitions of hate crime are viewed as overly narrow and unnecessarily exclusive. To enable more inclusive practices, many jurisdictions have embraced alternative terminologies such as bias crime, targeted crime and prejudice motivated crime. In this article, we examine how police agencies in Victoria, Australia, are grappling with incidents and responses to hate crime. Drawing on the accounts of high priority victim groups, we illustrate how victims and victim advocates make sense of new hate crime terminologies and whether these terminologies facilitate hate crime incident reporting. Our findings speak to the importance of shared understanding and vocabularies; however, police responses to prejudice motivated crime incidents and police interactions with victims remain a significant barrier to reporting behaviour.