Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 09/1998 by Gareth Griffith and Rachel Simpson
Page Content
- Proposed reform package: Arising out of the recent law
and order debate in NSW the Premier has foreshadowed a package of reforms,
including the creation of a new offence involving a prohibition on the carrying
of any knife in a public place or school. Also, the police are to be given a
Statewide power to search for knives and other weapons where they have a reason
to suspect that a person is carrying any deadly weapon. Another feature of the
proposed package is that police powers will be codified and consolidated into a
single Act.
- Background issues: Among the key background issues to
any debate about police powers in this State are the findings of the Royal
Commission into the NSW Police Service and the statistical findings on crime
rates and the fear of crime.
- Viewpoints in the contemporary debate: As one would
expect, comments on the recent developments in the law and order debate, as
well as on the proposed reform package, show a varying degree of emphasis on
the need for stricter policing and more police powers, on one side, against a
concern for balancing effective law enforcement with the protection of civil
liberties, on the other.
- Present police powers in NSW relating to street
offences: At present the relevant police powers are contained in a number
of Acts, notably the Summary Offences Act 1988 and the Crimes Act
1900.
- Approaches to crime prevention: Broadly speaking, a
distinction can be made between those approaches which emphasise individual
responsibility and accountability, against those which stress social and
cultural influences on human action and behaviour.
- US National Institute of Justice report: By way of an
overview of the available international research, this 1997 report presents an
account of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a wide range of crime
prevention programs in America, Europe and Australia. For example, it concludes
that increased directed patrols in street-corner hot spots of crime
works; that arrests of juveniles for minor offences doesn't work;
and that zero tolerance policing is promising, provided legitimacy
issues can be addressed.
- Preventing drug related crime: Various approaches have
been tried in the US, including the electronic tagging of drug offenders and
the use of drug courts which attempt to combine increased surveillance with
treatment.
- Australian perspectives on crime prevention: Over the
past two decades or so the various Australian jurisdictions have adopted a wide
range of crime prevention programs and strategies. These include the
introduction in NSW in 1982 of random breath testing of motorists. When
overseas experience is relied upon, the question of its applicability to
Australian conditions is an issue in itself. This is an important consideration
in the current debate about zero tolerance policing.
