Crime In Australia: The First National Outlook Symposium
Rose O'Neill
Strategic Policy Division
Social Policy Agency
In June this year members of the Social Policy Agency travelled to Canberra to attend a conference which sets out to present an overview of the current state of criminology in Australia, and discuss the key issues of the day relating to criminal justice: a "where we are now, and where we should be heading" scenario.
The Australian Institute of Criminology hosted the event, and it provided a valuable forum for the key academics, public servants and service deliverers from around Australia to meet and discuss key issues. Policy analysts from SPA who have been working on the crime prevention initiatives, and in particular looking at the role social services play in alleviating contributing factors in criminal offending, saw it as a unique opportunity to cast the work being done here in New Zealand in a wider context, to gain new information and to compare work being done in another jurisdiction. Networking with Australian colleagues working on similar endeavours was also one of the strong attractions of the conference.
The symposium on "Crime in Australia" was in effect the launching of the "new-look" Australian Institute of Criminology under its recently-appointed Director, Dr Adam Graycar. Unlike its counterpart here in New Zealand, it is a government-funded organisation rather than part of an academic institution. Following a protracted series of government review procedures the Institute has undergone radical reorganisation of its structure and function. In the past, the Institute had a significant research and publication capability as well as a responsibility to provide the Federal Government with advice on policy issues relating to criminal justice.
This role has been revised and the "new" Institute will operate along similar lines to a government ministry. The emphasis will be almost solely on the provision of advice to Ministers, with a particular emphasis on crime prevention. Broader responsibilities have been curtailed.
The conference was opened by the Hon. Duncan Kerr, the Australian Minister for Justice who discussed the difficulties faced in a combined state and federal administration system to develop a consistent and focused direction for criminal justice. This was a theme that arose repeatedly throughout the conference in a variety of forms. Mr Kerr noted that it was the intention of the Federal Government to push for the adoption of a uniform common law.
The Federal Government is now heavily dependent on State Government complementarity in order to be operational. This effectively compromises the ability to implement any national programmes, or any single cohesive approach to central issues of criminal justice.
Having established the size of the problem criminologists face in Australia, Dr Graycar followed with a "State of the Nation" address where he outlined the new role of the Institute and the realities of the political environment in which they operate. He looked to a future where the Institute produced four quality products: clear, coherent and comparable data; an inventory of successful research; an information bank available on-line; and products for the criminology community in plain English, including material relevant to training, policy advice and symposiums, for maintaining direct communication with administrators in the criminal justice community.
Essentially, Dr Graycar presented a scenario where the Institute of Criminology plays a facilitative role in gathering and processing quality information, making it available to interested parties and ensuring that an appropriate framework for positive action directs the work of practitioners in the criminal justice system. The rest of the symposium was a first attempt to provide such a forum for open debate and information exchange. The conference papers are available on computer disc.
New Zealand was well-represented at the conference with representatives from DSW, the Police and the Crime Prevention Unit. For the Kiwi contingent the conference offered an opportunity for self-reflection. Although many Australians in this field refer to New Zealand on occasion as though we were one of the continent's states, the sentiment is not reciprocated. In many respects we were simply visitors observing the struggles and debates of a country that, for all its cultural similarities, experiences widely different dilemmas in the area of criminal justice. The magnitude of the difficulties posed by the state/federal interface permeated debate and daunted even the staunch-hearted. The consequent difficulties of co-ordination, direction and implementation are on a scale far greater than that faced by social policy advisors in this country.
The other reason that the New Zealand participants may have chosen to remain quietly observing the processes around them was that on nearly every indicator possible it was more than evident that in the criminal justice field New Zealand has progressed far more rapidly than our Australian counterparts. Several initiatives advocated at the conference as needing immediate development or implementation have been under way here for some years, or are well on the way to being implemented, such as the establishment of a Commissioner for Children, and a national crime prevention strategy.
A wide difference in progress on substantive operational issues was also apparent. The Australians were looking to the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project for direction in responses to domestic violence. They are still debating issues of appropriate arrest, i.e. whether the police should make an arrest, based on their own observation of behaviour, or whether to continue to rely on victim complaint. While there are still a number of issues not yet satisfactorily resolved in New Zealand, the philosophical and practical issues currently being debated in Australia are ones which we have addressed. We are now at the point of evaluating and refining our initiatives, and our debate is at a completely different stage.
A similar comment could be made for issues relating to juvenile justice, community policing, indigenous peoples issues and adult diversion processes. The areas where perhaps we are not ahead of Australia are organised crime, white collar crime, fraud against Government and consumer crime. These are emerging areas of interest in New Zealand – some less advanced than others. They are also emerging interests in Australia and the debate was interesting and informative if one could pick one's way through differing State agendas.
A number of dominant ideas seemed to shape general debates at the conference, including the media, culture and the interrelatedness of social policies. Close consideration was given to the role the media plays in shaping people's perceptions of crime and how it contributes to the community's sense of security, or, alternately, to fear of crime (especially amongst older people). The question was asked how, or if, media representatives could be held accountable for the images they present, and the accuracy of these. In the area of culture, the substantive issues differ greatly from the New Zealand situation, but commentators were consistently discussing it in terms of a class analysis which progressed along very similar lines to academic analysis and debate here.
Also, there was broad recognition of the fact that the criminal justice system can be affected by the social policies of Government agencies which on the surface would appear to share only a tenuous relationship to it, e.g. housing, health and education.
Finally, the call for empowerment of local communities was strong. This is very similar to the approach adopted by the New Zealand crime prevention strategy. Crime is seen to be different in different communities and it is therefore logical to resource local community infrastructures to deal with their own problems. Similarly, at this conference, as at the many others I have attended in Australia over the years, there was a consistent call by commentators to find a solution to the state/federal interface and develop some overriding strategies that will provide direction and focus for the whole of Australia. Unfortunately, this call does not so much fall on deaf political ears, as it seems to get lost in the mire of political and bureaucratic legacies that burden the criminal justice system in this vast country.
Like all conferences as large as this one, the academic debate which used the themes outlined above was interspersed with a range of political agendas such as the call for increased Police resources to cope with the changing expectation of their role, as well as attempts to define the exact extent of the "crime problem" so that it could be quantified and financial costs attributed.
The conference was useful in two quite specific ways. The first is networking with Australian colleagues in the field. The second is that it helped to establish benchmarks for ourselves and the debates we are involved in here in New Zealand. When one is working in a particular field all of the time it is useful to go to a conference of this nature because it allows one to step back and to see exactly how far we have come in comparison to other people, and where there is still work to be done. Certainly, as a result of these two days, I was left with the impression that in New Zealand we have actually achieved a large number of things that have been worth achieving, and the debates, evaluations and new initiatives we are undertaking here will have a lot to contribute to international knowledge in the area of criminal justice in the future
