Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand

Police Act Review

The Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand symposium was in November 2006.

In early 2006 a project was launched to review and rewrite the legislative framework for policing in New Zealand - the 1958 Police Act and 1992 Police Regulations. The project will inform the development of new legislation which better reflects the challenges of modernday policing and better positions New Zealand Police for the future. In order to achieve this, the Police Act Review is providing opportunities for ideas to come forward. As well as consulting on a series of eight Issues Papers and hosting discussion forums on key policing topics, a special symposium was convened to examine some of the wider issues around how policing and security is conducted in modern New Zealand society.

An important context for the symposium is the idea of "the risk society". The issue of risk, and its production through society's concern with an uncertain future, has a significant impact on both public expectation of Police and the way in which policing is managed. Such a perspective has become more dominant in western democracies during recent decades:

The desire for security, orderliness, and control, for the management of risk and the taming of chance is, to be sure, an underlying theme of any culture.

David Garland (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p 194.

The growing influence of the private security sector on policing activities is another area of interest, particularly given the issues with policing mass private property or quasi public/ private spaces, such as shopping malls and sports arenas. A conservative estimate of the size of the private security industry in New Zealand suggests there are already more private security guards than Police employees. This has led researchers to describe the developing security arrangements as a blurring of the public and private, where there are increasing public/private spaces, increasing private contributions to policing, and increasing formal and informal co-operation arrangements between different sectors offering security services.

Internationally, police chiefs have expressed an interest in discussions around these new policing networks:

What I am proposing is a position in which the police service puts itself forward, fi rst, as the central point for inter-agency co-operation designed to strengthen communities and, secondly, as the centre-point of a coordinated system of patrol services, carried out by a mixture of police, volunteer, local authority and private sources. It is not abandoning a monopoly of patrol - it is admitting that we haven't had one for years and then moving the discussion on.

Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, 16 November 2005 (full lecture available online)

To focus on some of the key issues arising from this diagnostic, a symposium entitled Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand was held in Wellington on 22 November 2006. The symposium was jointly sponsored by the Police Act Review and Victoria University of Wellington's School of Government. It attracted a large number of participants from a wide range of government agencies, non-government and private sector organisations. The symposium provided a unique forum at which speakers and attendees could share thoughts and ideas relevant to policing in twenty-fi rst century New Zealand. This volume comprises edited papers presented at that symposium.

The papers represent the views of different actors involved in policing and security, including representatives from New Zealand's central and local government, private and communitybased security providers, as well as international policing scholars and practitioners. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the premise of the symposium, there was some discussion about the notion of police versus policing. The small but significant difference between these words was raised by a variety of speakers throughout the course of the day, and was further explored during a panel discussion which concluded the symposium.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to convey in this volume the reactions of the symposium participants to some of the issues discussed. In particular, presentations relating to the growth of private sector security organisations, and their call for the privatisation of some policing functions, prompted healthy debate. It is therefore hoped this volume of edited proceedings will continue to encourage an ongoing exchange of opinions and ideas.

Readers who wish to continue to contribute to the development of a contemporary legislative framework for policing in New Zealand are invited to let their voices be heard during the ongoing public consultation process during 2007.

Proceedings

Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand - Proceedings of a symposium held on 22 November 2006 (also available in PDF format for printing - 90 pages, 526 K bytes)

Speech notes and slides


In the modern world, public police forces no longer have a monopoly on policing.

Policing today is carried out by an array of central and local government agencies with enforcement powers, private sector security companies, as well as volunteer and not-for-profit organisations.

A special symposium on Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand will be held on Wednesday 22 November 2006 to focus on some of the key issues that arise from this development.

The day will begin with a keynote address by global futurist Professor Jim Dator on what our future society may look.  This will be followed by a local respondent providing a New Zealand context for Professor Dator's comments.

The next sessions will start by examining the wider context and basis of policing, before leading into a discussion of New Zealand's current co-operative domestic security environment.  They will include presentations from international policing scholars and practitioners, as well as representatives of New Zealand's Security Industry Association, local government and other community-based security and policing providers.

The afternoon session will look to the future of policing and consider how we might best position policing in New Zealand.  The final session will be a rapporteur session with a panel, chaired by Professor Gary Hawke of VUW's School of Government, providing their impressions of the way forward.

The programme has been designed so there are opportunities for discussion within each session, to enable the widest possible range of ideas and perspectives to be canvassed.

Confirmed contributors include Senior Assistant Commissioner Ang Hak Seng (Director of Planning and Organisation Department, Singapore Police Force), Commissioner
Howard Broad (New Zealand Police), Scott Carter(New Zealand Security Association), Paul
Evans (Police and Crime Standards Directorate, Home Office), H. E. George Fergusson (British
High Commissioner), Mayor Meng Foon (Gisborne District Council), Professor Peter Grabosky
(Australian National University), Ron McQuilter (Paragon Risk Ltd.), Simon Murdoch (Secretary
of Foreign Affairs and Trade), Associate Professor Greg Newbold (University of Canterbury),
Greg O'Connor (President, New Zealand Police Association), Professor Clifford Shearing
(Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town), Professor Philip Stenning (Centre for
Criminological Research, Keele University), Jane Stichbury (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of
Constabulary), Peter Walden (National President, New Zealand Maori Wardens Association),
Maarten Wevers (Chief Executive, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet).

The symposium was launched on the evening of Tuesday 21 November 2006 with a function hosted by Hon Annette King (Minister of Police) in Parliament's Grand Hall.

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