Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand
Proceedings of a symposium held on 22 November 2006


Contents i

Preface

Programme

Introduction - Minister's opening address

Keynote address

  Professor Jim Dator: Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies

New Zealand respondent

  Greg O'Connor: President, New Zealand Police Association

Session 1 - Principles/Foundations of policing

  Jane Stichbury: Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, UK

  Paul Evans: Director, Police and Crime Standards Directorate, Home Office, UK

  Professor Philip Stenning: Centre for Criminological Research, Keele University, UK

Session 2 - Policing in a wider context: Private sector and community views of co-operative domestic security

  Peter Walden: National President, New Zealand Maori Wardens Association

  Scott Carter: Chairman, New Zealand Security Association

  Ron McQuilter: Managing Director, Paragon New Zealand

  Mayor Meng Foon: Gisborne District Council

  Simon Murdoch: Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Session 3 - Policing into the future

  Senior Assistant Commissioner Ang Hak Seng: Singapore Police Force

  Professor Clifford Shearing: Institute of Criminology, University of CapeTown/Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University

  Commissioner Howard Broad: New Zealand Police

Session 4 - Securing the future: Facing current and future realities

  Discussion panel led by Professor Gary Hawke: School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington


Preface

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 modern- day 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 infl uence 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 (accessible online at http://cms.met.police.uk/news/policy_organisational_news_ and_general_information/commissioner/the_richard_dimbleby_lecture_2005_by_sir_ian_blair_qpm).

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.

iii


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 community- based 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.

Howard Broad

Gary Hawke

Commissioner

Professor, School of Government

New Zealand Police

Victoria University of Wellington

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Programme

7.00 am

Registration opens

8.30 am

Welcome and introduction

Superintendent Hamish McCardle (NZ Police)

Professor David Mackay (Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Victoria University of Wellington)

8.40 am

Keynote address

Professor Jim Dator (Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)

9.05 am

New Zealand respondents

Maarten

Wevers

(Chief Executive, Department of the Prime Minister and

Cabinet, NZ)

Greg O'Connor (President, NZ Police Association)

9.30 am

Session 1 ­ Principles/Foundations of policing

Chair: British High Commissioner, H. E. George Fergusson

Paul Evans (Director, Police and Crime Standards Directorate, UK)

Jane Stichbury (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, UK)

Professor Philip Stenning (Keele University, UK)

10.45 am

Morning tea

11.15 am

Session 2 ­ Policing in a wider context: Private sector and community views of co-operative domestic security

Chair: Associate Professor Greg Newbold (University of Canterbury)

Peter

Walden (National President, NZ Maori Wardens Association)

Scott

Carter (Chairman, NZ Security Association)

Ron McQuilter (Managing Director, Paragon NZ)

Mayor Meng Foon (Gisborne District Council)

Simon Murdoch (Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade, NZ)

1.00 pm

Lunch

v


1.45 pm

Session 3 ­ Policing into the future

Chair: Professor Peter Grabosky (Australian National University)

Senior Assistant Commissioner Ang Hak Seng (Singapore Police Force)

Professor Clifford Shearing (Institute of Criminology, University of Cape Town/Regulatory Institutions Network, Australian National University)

Commissioner Howard Broad (NZ Police)

3.30 pm

Afternoon tea

4.00 pm

Session 4 ­ Securing the future: Facing current and future realities

Chair: Professor Gary Hawke (School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington)

Panel led discussion and open forum of key themes from the symposium

5.50 pm

Closing remarks

vi


Introduction

Minister's opening address

The following is an edited and revised version of the address given at the symposium's launch function by Hon Annette King, Minister of Police.

It is my pleasure to welcome you all fi rstly to Parliament's Grand Hall, but most importantly to the New Zealand Police/Victoria University of Wellington School of Government symposium on policing.

The theme of this symposium - Securing the future: Networked policing in New Zealand - is one I have taken a close interest in during the year I have been Police Minister. And one reason for that, apart from wanting to help create an appropriate legislative environment for policing in the twenty-fi rst century, is the infectious enthusiasm of tonight's MC, Superintendent Hamish McCardle and the other New Zealand Police staff involved in the 1958 Police Act review. Everyone taking part in the review - and I count myself among them - is delighted to be in at the ground fl oor of work that we all hope will endure for many decades to come.

There are a number of other people I want to welcome especially tonight, including Police Commissioner Howard Broad, of course, and His Excellency George Fergusson, the British High Commissioner who has kindly agreed to chair tomorrow's symposium session featuring three of his highly-respected compatriots in the areas of policing and criminology. I also want to warmly welcome senior members of Victoria University of Wellington, co- hosts of this symposium along with the Police Act Review team; and welcome also to a number of my Parliamentary colleagues, members of political party research units, and representatives from police service organisations, including Police Association President Greg O'Connor. The future agenda for policing is too important for politics to divide us, and I welcome the constructive approach which has been taken by everyone participating in the Police Act Review. I also want to welcome our special guests from overseas, and thank you also to our own New Zealand speakers and chairs who are contributing to the symposium. I am sure you will all have much of value to add to a debate which will assume increasing importance as the new Police Act takes shape.

And as for the current Act, I don't like to think of something conceived in the late 1950s as being past its use by date already, but I think everyone here can see the need to bring Police legislation up to date for the twenty-first century. Modernisation of the legislative framework is not about throwing out all old thinking simply due to its age, of course, because the principles underpinning policing are as relevant today as they have been since they were developed by Sir Robert Peel in the 1820s. However, the 1958 Police Act was written when society and police were vastly different from today. Police technology mostly consisted of a set of handcuffs, a baton and a torch. Instead of a radio, officers carried a whistle. A car was as much a luxury for a police officer as it was for a member of the public. Police walked the beat to maintain law and order on the block, and were pretty much the only enforcement agency on that block.

Those early legislators could not have envisaged the changes to the society police now work in. The review of the Police Act is an opportunity to develop legislation that builds on the best of the past while adapting for the present, and preparing New Zealand Police for the future. This symposium is set to play a crucial role in that review.

1


Like the legislators of the 1950s, of course, we cannot hope to second guess the future, but we have to do the best we can, and if we can produce legislation that lasts for some 50 years, as they did, then we will not have done too badly at all.

This forum brings together experts who have been thinking about the kinds of issues that need to be carefully considered in advance of the new Act. What will future society look like? No one has a foolproof crystal ball, but I know Professor Jim Dator, of Hawaii's Research Center for Futures Studies, has been thinking about what will happen for longer than probably anyone else here this evening. Singapore is a country that sits at the hub both geographically and in terms of international policing. Singapore Police have had to grapple with many issues yet to face New Zealand, and that is one reason Senior Assistant Commissioner Ang Hak Seng is so well positioned to share important views on the future of policing. And Professor Clifford Shearing, of Cape Town University's Institute of Criminology, has been involved with a number of policing changes, including those in Northern Ireland and Canada, with more recent experience garnered in the new South Africa, of course.

Our existing policing model refl ects both New Zealand's own development and a mix of policing practice that is partly based on the British colonial policing model and more latterly on other international policing developments from regions such as North America, Europe, and Australia. It is therefore entirely appropriate that our international guests include Jane Stichbury, of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, Paul Evans, from the Home Offi ce Police and Crime Standards Directorate, Professor Philip Stenning, of the Centre for Criminological Research, Keele University, and Professor Peter Grabosky from the Australian National University. Their viewpoints and experience will be invaluable, and I am sure that they will all contribute toward what we create here as the new model for policing the New Zealand way, a model that draws on the best we can learn from other jurisdictions as well as the best we have learned from our own experience.

The process we are going through, including this symposium, will enable us to identify our unique strengths and opportunities to best serve New Zealand's policing needs. As you all know, New Zealand Police are no longer the only law enforcement agency on the block. The security industry, local government and volunteer groups all play a major role in policing today. I'm sure that Gisborne Mayor Meng Foon, Foreign Affairs and Trade Secretary Simon Murdoch, Maori Wardens Association National President Peter Walden, Security Association chair Scott Carter and Paragon Risk Ltd Managing Director Ron McQuilter can highlight issues raised by this overlap, and help point the way to using all our resources as well as we can to provide the best possible service to New Zealanders.

When I announced this review in March I said the legislative process would allow local and overseas input. This symposium is at the heart of what is, and will be, an extensive consultation process. If I needed reassurance that we are going about the process in the right way, I certainly received it when I visited the UK in May, and was told by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair in London how important he believes it is to start a dialogue with the public on rewriting our Act, and about the shape and nature of policing. Sir Ian says there is a crucial link between legislation, policy and operational leadership, and urges a comprehensive, big picture approach. The good news is that is exactly what we are setting out to do here, and we may actually be ahead of any such public engagement in the UK about the future of policing. I also met Sir Ronnie Flannigan, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, who emphasised New Zealand's major advantage in having one national police force compared to the 43 forces in England and Wales. Sir Ronnie's best advice to New Zealand, in terms of the review, is to be measured, `taking the organisation with you'. That is also certainly what we are setting out to achieve.

2


This forum presents an opportunity to be challenged and to explore concepts and ideas that will help inform our thinking around a new Act. I hope everyone at the symposium uses this rare opportunity to share international and local experiences. As Minister of Police, I will do all I can to champion the legislative process to produce the best possible outcome for New Zealand Police as they face the policing demands of the future, and strive to help create a New Zealand that is safe for all our people and all our communities.

This symposium is an important step along the way of helping us all understand more about how criminal and anti-social behaviour can be tackled more effectively, how public confi dence and assurance can be increased and how better partnerships can achieve better outcomes.

If the symposium can achieve all that in even only small degrees, it will count as a major success as far as I am concerned. Thank you all very much for supporting this most important initiative.

3


Keynote address

Professor Jim Dator

Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies

This opening session aimed to engage participants in thinking about the future of both the world and New Zealand. Professor Dator's discussion of four alternative futures sought to stretch the imagination regarding the possible international future and future policing scenarios.

Jim Dator is Professor and Director of the Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies, Department of Political Science and Adjunct Professor in the Programme in Public Administration, the College of Architecture, and the Center for Japanese Studies, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa; Co-Chair, Space and Society Division, International Space University, Strasbourg, France; former President, World Futures Studies Federation; and Fellow and member of the Executive Council, World Academy of Art and Science. He is a Danforth Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and Fulbright Fellow. In 1966 he taught the fi rst course in any U.S. university on the future and in 1977 he founded the Institute for Alternative Futures with Alvin Toffl er and Clement Bezold. As a futurist Dr. Dator has worked in several major topical areas including the media, government, space exploration and travel, and the judiciary. His work as a consultant with The World Futures Studies Federation and the International Space University has taken him to more than 30 countries where he has consulted extensively with other governmental, military, business, educational, religious, and especially many non-profi t, public- interest organizations. He consults widely on futures of law, governance, education, and space.

I am honoured and delighted to have this opportunity to talk with you about such an important topic. As you know, I am fortunate to have been asked to come from my small island to visit your somewhat larger and culturally-related islands several times over the last decade and a half. The fi rst time was in 1992, to speak at a conference on the futures of higher education organised by John Hinchcliff, who I came to admire very much and count still now as an inspiring friend. My visit was just after New Zealand had boldy - and I felt rashly and perhaps unwisely - transformed itself from being the world's most outstanding welfare state into a nimble player in the neoliberal global political economy. The future was quite uncertain then. Many long-standing comforts and privileges had been abolished and many people for the fi rst time were thrust very much on their own. Yet, in spite of my concerns, it seems everyone rallied and came out OK in the end. If that is not the case, I am sure someone will set me straight me later.

I next came to New Zealand for two years in a row - 2000 and 2001 - to meet with different groups of your fi ne judges to discuss the futures of the judiciary. This was a continuation of a long set of such consultations that I have had over the years, beginning fi rst with the judiciary of Hawaii, then spreading to every state and federal judiciary in the US, then to the state of Pohnpei and the Federated States of Micronesia generally, and eventually to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

So I am very happy now to be asked back to meet with your police as you embark on a task that seems not to have undertaken for half a century. But that is the way we islanders prefer to work, isn't it? - slow and easy. We prefer to make things that last, and don't embrace changes easily or lightly - I will assume that your romance with Rogernomics, like ours with Reaganomics and its even more unpleasant successor Bushnomics, was an uncharacteristic bit of daring-do that you will not likely repeat again any time soon.

But it seems to have occurred to someone in your midst that perhaps some things might have changed a bit over the past half century and so it might be good to revisit your sturdy Police Act of 1958 and see if it can be revised or re-imagined so that it can last for another

4


half century. Which is where I come in; I like thinking in 30-50 year time spans, and so I relish this chance to work with you on this project.

Futures and planning

As you heard, I have been engaged in futures research, teaching and consulting for a very long time, so let me say a word or two about what futures studies is in relation to strategic planning so you will understand exactly what I think can and cannot, or at least should not, be done in this regard. First of all, an assessment of the futures should be done before you engage in any planning, and then your planning should be made on the basis of your assessment of future problems and possibilities, and not only or even mainly on the basis of past or even current problems and possibilities. This is easier said than done. Humans have an almost irresistible urge to plan for the present - or, more precisely, to assume that whatever is happening now will continue, and thus to project the present into the future and then plan for it.

This is one major reason why such plan almost always fail, some before the ink on the plan is dry, others very soon afterwards. This is also a major reason why there is such massive resistance to planning in the fi rst place, since it is almost always an exercise in futility - a total waste of time that could have better been spent in many other ways, including catching law breakers instead of merely planning to.

So a proper futures assessment should begin with various techniques that get people out of what I call their `crackpot realism' - their fully understandable but quite misleading belief that the world of the present will dominate the future - and to fail seriously to consider other possibilities. The events of tonight have not been designed for me to do this with you now. But I hope some such exercises are in fact envisioned for you before you sit down to revise your Police Act and develop a strategic plan based on it. If not, the new Act, and your plan, may be satisfying to you and others now, but it may fail to help you anticipate those things about the futures you most need to know.

So I will simply state certain concepts about futures studies in relation to planning in the form of `laws'. I do this in part because I want people to take them seriously before they ignore them, and in part because you are police accustomed to thinking in terms of laws and their enforcement and I would like to have some police around to enforce these laws of the futures and to bring their violators to justice - although reality will sadly punish most violators better than any court can.

From THE future to alternative futures to preferred futures

So here are some very important basic principles upon which I urge you to base all of your futures envisioning and strategic planning:

1. First, it is impossible to `predict' THE future. It is not possible to say precisely what will happen, or what the world will be like, fi ve, ten, 20 to 50 years from now. It is foolish to try, and it is even more foolish - and dangerous - to believe anyone who purports to predict the future. I certainly cannot predict the future, you can be sure of that.

2. However, what is possible, and necessary, is to forecast many alternative futures--to try to understand and explore many of the futures before us. Moreover, these alternatives futures are not merely variations around a single set of assumptions, but rather are profoundly different possibilities based on different assumptions of the way the world works, and of

5


how the trends and events shaping the futures might emerge and fade, swell and shrink, and interact in the coming years. I will say more about the major alternatives shortly.

3. Among these many alternatives, there is no such thing as `the most likely future'. Indeed, I encourage you to view the idea of a likely, default, or highly probable future with great suspicion - as an assumption that is more likely to be harmful, causing serious misunderstanding, than as the norm from which a few so-called `wild card' futures might diverge. In my understanding, all futures before us are more or less `wild cards'. There is no `normal' future from which others might deviate any more. While that which is often thought to be `the most likely future' is indeed among the possible alternatives, it is, in fact, no more likely than many of the alternatives.

Continuities, cycles and novelties

My next set of assumptions arises from what I consider to be `the three components' of the futures. By that I mean the next 20 to 50 years will emerge from three factors in relation to the past and present.

First of all, some percentage of the totality of the futures will be things that exist in the present. Indeed, some percentage of the futures will be things that existed in the past as well as the present. I call this component of the futures `continuities' - those things that have been important parts of all societies from the beginning of time to the present, and hence will be in the futures.

To the extent most of the futures will be basically the same as the past and present, we need only to study history and contemporary sciences to understand the most important features of the futures. Indeed, to the extent we are successful and learned people, we can trust our own knowledge, experiences, and intuitions to anticipate, and to help others anticipate, what is most important about the futures.

However, some percentage of the totality of the futures may be different from the present, but very similar to, and perhaps even identical with, some or many factors in the past. If most, or the most important parts, of the futures have been experienced in the past, but are not existent, or not signifi cant, in the present, then we have a problem. The problem is that we are animals who learn primarily by doing and feeling, and not by thinking and imagining. We of course do learn a great deal from reading and lectures, but when push comes to shove, we fall back on what we have directly experienced, whether we want to or not. That is the way we are biologically disposed to learn and act. On the other hand, well- produced mediated experiences - fi lm, video and electronic games - often make an even greater impact than does direct reality even though they are entirely fanciful.

Nonetheless, a good and deep knowledge of history is essential to anticipating the futures IF most of the futures will be like some aspect of the past, but not of the present. The more we can learn about these aspects of the past that will be dominant in the futures, the better prepared we should be intellectually if not emotionally.

But what if most of the futures are novel - not part of the present, not part of any past, but very important in the futures? Then we may be in deep trouble, personally and socially. We can rely confi dently neither on our knowledge of history, nor on our understanding of the present, nor our own experiences to anticipate the futures. So if most of the futures may be novel, we may be largely incapable of anticipating or shaping it effectively without considerable effort and training.

6


At the very least, we may have to ask those people who engage in futures studies for whatever help they can give us. Yet very few people even know that futures studies exists while others have uninformed opinions of it. And since almost all formal institutions of education everywhere in the world totally ignore futures studies, and overwhelmingly stress history and contemporary sciences, we are in very serious trouble, individually and socially, IF the most important features of the futures are in fact novel.

And I think most of the futures may be novel. Once upon a time - and for a very long time - past, present, and futures were largely the same. It made total sense to look forward by looking backward. But over the last two to three hundred years the pace of social and environmental change has been increasing so much that less and less of the future is like the present and the past.

I put it this way; whereas for tens of thousands of years people lived in a world where 80% of the future was like the past and present, 15% of it cyclical, and only 5% novel, we now live in a world where those fi gures are reversed - continuity may only account for about 5% of the next 50 years, cycles may remain at 15%, but novelty may overwhelm our futures at 80%.

I am not using those fi gures precisely, of course, but I am indicating orders of magnitude of change that I believe you should expect and plan for here. You simply must not use the past 50 years, or 500 years or 5000 years as a guide for anticipating the next 20, 30, 50 or more years and beyond. You need other sources and other criteria.

Dator's Second Law of the Futures

And that gets us to Dator's second law of the futures. If most of the future is novel, then most of what you learn about the future should be out of your commonsense and experience. Your reactions to useful statements about the futures should be disbelief, avoidance, shock, revulsion, denial. Or as I state it `Any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous'. Please bear that in mind not only tonight, but more importantly as you move forward in developing your act, vision, and plans. The really worthwhile ideas you need to consider may be those you fi nd the hardest to accept or even acknowledge, and yet `any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous'.

Now, unfortunately, I must also admit that not all ridiculous ideas will be useful. Some will just be ridiculous. And therein lies the problem. Since any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous but since some ridiculous ideas will not be useful, you have the diffi cult job of sorting the useful ideas from the un-useful ones. But don't make that judgment too soon. Be willing to consider crazy ideas long and hard before you reject them. And don't throw them away too far. Keep them close by in case you see they begin to make sense later on.

Four Generic Alternative Futures

A few moments ago, I said that it was important to think of the futures as plural and not singular - as alternative, the arena of many possibilities. Time is not like a telephone pole, with a single past fi rmly rooted in the ground, a sturdy present clearly in front of us, and a single future rising predictably overhead. Rather time is like a banyan tree that has many roots in the past; a complicated present; and a rich abundance of futures spreading out all around and over us. The actual future - the present at a later time - will be one of those thousands of individual leafs above us. There are indeed thousands - if not billions - of

7


possible futures lying ahead and we are not able to predict with any confi dence which of the possibilities will be THE future later on. But, while that should prevent us from planning as though we did know the future for certain, it should not discourage us from trying to envision and work for the future we prefer.

We can do this because over the years I have learned that it is possible to bundle the many possible futures into four major generic alternatives. That is to say, if one takes all of the millions, if not billions, of images of the future that are in the minds of humanity now, and sorts through them, they end up in one of four piles. While the details of each image differ, the underlying assumptions, I have learned, fall into four more or less neat categories that I call continued growth, collapse, discipline, and transformation.

One alternative future: continued growth

Without a doubt, the most common image of the future is that of continued growth. It is the offi cial image of the future of all modern societies and institutions. Every organisation on the planet is organised around the assumption of the possibility and desirability of continued growth. Until they learn otherwise, even institutions opposed to continued growth generally - such as various organisations concerned about population growth or environmental pollution or energy exhaustion - nonetheless view their own success as an organisation by whether they are growing or not.

The reason so few schools and universities have courses about the future is that in fact ALL courses are about the future - about the single future of continued economic growth. The entire purpose of modern education is to get and keep the economy growing; to turn peasants and lords into workers and managers (or into soldiers and generals) in the service of the growing industrial state, and then more recently, into knowledge and support workers in the service of the growing post-industrial, information society.

So with the four alternative futures in mind, I looked over the work that you have done so far in thinking about a new Police Act and a new strategic plan based on it. I have been very impressed both by the WAY you have gone about your work, which is such a good, serious, scholarly example for the rest of the world, and I have also been impressed by your results.

Nonetheless, I feel that essentially all of your thinking has been along the lines of the standard continuation future. Of course, there is plenty of novelty in simply a continuation of what has been and is happening now. And you have identifi ed a lot of that novelty very well.

But, at least in what I have been given or I have found to read, you have not shown much appreciation of any of the other three futures at all. And this may be a big mistake.

A second alternative future: Collapse

Consider collapse. First of all, nothing is forever. Everything that exists now at one time did not exist, and at some point in the future will not exist - either not exist at all, or not exist in anything like its current form or importance. All civilisations, all businesses, all forms of governance, and all institutions come into existence at a certain time for a certain set of reasons and fade away at some point in their future. Some things last for a long time, but nothing is forever.

8


Jared Diamond has recently made this part of my job as a futurist easier by pointing out in his book bluntly titled, Collapse, how and why seemingly-eternal communities simply could not cope with the challenges facing them and went extinct, or nearly so. His story of what happened to Rapa Nui, (sometimes called Easter Island) for example, is every illustrative to all of the rest of us Pacifi c Islanders, it seems to me, since, as he tells it, the islanders did it to themselves. Unlike the situation in Hawaii - and, dare I say, here - it was not outsiders, Westerners, who basically ended the 1000 years history of Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui has no coral reef, and so few fi sh near shore. Canoes are needed for deep sea fi shing. But the trees needed for making canoes were cut down for various purposes including to use as wheels upon which to roll the giant stone statues for which the island is so well known, transporting them from where they were quarried to where they were erected.

Diamond asks us to image what, if anything, they were thinking when they felled the last tree long enough to make into a canoe and so, from that point on, had to patch together existing canoes until eventually they no longer had any seaworthy vessels at all, and thus were unable to do any signifi cant fi shing. As a consequence, already-limited protein sources became fewer and fewer until the best sources of protein were each other. `May the skin of your mother rot in my teeth' is said to have been a curse that the dwindling Rapa Nuians hurled at each other as they were forced into cannibalism because of their complete focus on the present and failure of foresight.

Though experts may quarrel about the details of the story, Rapa Nui is a riveting metaphor for space ship Earth, and it certainly should be an even grimmer example for Hawaii and New Zealand, I believe. We in Hawaii are totally dependent on massive daily imports of food, goods, oil, and visitors to keep our economy going. If something happens to prevent the delivery of those things, we starve. We too may be reduced to cannibalism as we struggle to adjust to a way of life none of us has ever personally experienced or anticipated.

And of course it might happen. I take recently-renewed warnings of `peak oil' very seriously, and have tried to get our policy makers to move from oil to other sources for the past 30 years. But we are still completely unprepared for such an eventuality. While more and more people are becoming worried, not much is actually happening to anticipate the event. Indeed, when Hawaii enjoyed the little earthquake you might have heard about a short while ago, we learned, yet again, how utterly dependent we are on so many fragile things going right, and how vulnerable we are if even a few go wrong. But then, the lights came back on, and we immediately forgot about the future.

What about here? How resilient and self-suffi cient are you? You certainly have many more resources than Rapa Nui did or than Hawaii does now, but you seem clearly vulnerable. And while you probably could survive and indeed thrive quite well, it would be with a very different lifestyle from what you have now, or from what your police strategic plans assume. Clearly there will be different and important new roles for the police in such a future. You won't be nearly so busy with traffi c offensives and auto crashes if everyone is walking or riding bicycles.

Lack of oil and the failure to fi nd equivalent energy sources quickly enough is indeed a future worth seriously thinking about and planning for at the same time you are planning for continued economic growth, but is only one of many looming possible causes of social collapse that also need to be anticipated.

For example, I am equally worried about the global economic system that you so daringly bought into two decades ago. It is so over-laden with debt - primarily led by the US which

9


has been the leading debtor nation for quite a while and which plunges deeper and deeper into debt with every passing second - that it may take very little indeed to bring down the entire global Ponzi scheme we call the neoliberal economic system.

And global warming, sea-level rise, ozone holes, and all of the other environmental challenges which not only may impact New Zealand in some signifi cant way but, more importantly, may make New Zealand very attractive to those Pacifi c Islanders and many others whose communities may soon sink beneath the rising seas.

And... Well, you get the point, I hope. Collapse is no longer just titillating fodder for horror movies. It is a real and growing option - locally and globally - that must be anticipated quickly, honestly and well.

Now, you may be discussing these things as you plan, but I didn't see much evidence of it in what I have read. I think it should be there if it is not - not instead of continued economic growth, but in addition to it, with plans, policies, resources, personnel and continuing attention paid equally to both.

The end of `Police'?

So far I have only been talking about collapse only in terms of society. But each of the four futures should be considered in terms of the organisation itself--in this case of the very idea and institution of the `police'.

At the present time, military, paramilitary, and police organisations are growing more than anything else - except for the growth in terrorists, criminals and violence generally. I have noted that you are very much aware of this trend in New Zealand, including of the growth of private `crime prevention' institutions in response to it. It is not too much to imagine in the US - and maybe here? - that at some point in the not-too-distant future, all Americans will either be law-enforcement offi cers, or lawyers, or criminals, with individuals moving freely back and forth among the three categories.

The famous science fi ction writer, Arthur C. Clarke, was also president of an association of crime and murder-mystery fi ction writers, and he said the motto of that organisation should be `Crime doesn't pay - enough.'

That is clearly the case for many of you here. You are in a growth industry and more and more time and money is going to you and related organisations and away from education, health, and welfare personnel. You expect - you probably hope - that this will continue. And you probably think it foolish for me to suggest that it might be otherwise.

But I think a very convincing case can be made that while violence and terror may seem to be growing and thus that crime prevention and punishment institutions must grow as well, in fact humans are becoming less and less violent as a species, and hence less and less tolerant of violence that we once accepted without serious social alarm or even notice.

I read that you are concerned about the rise of child and spouse abuse in New Zealand, as we are in the US and elsewhere. But think about it for a moment. What is now called child abuse were often highly desirable child rearing practices a very short while ago. I grew up in the South of the United States where the social values of the time very clearly said, `spare the rod and spoil the child.' It was expected that a child should be beaten - beaten until the skin was broken and blood was fl owing - for any number of behaviors that we now

10


consider normal - and perhaps even cute - such as `talking back' to an adult. In my days, `children were to be seen and not heard'. Now we don't want to crush the self-esteem of the little buggers, and so we encourage them to mouth off at adults.

While I was not beaten - only because I had no father (I was reared, fortunately, by three strong and supporting women) - all of my friends were beaten almost every day. And being sent to the principal's offi ce at school meant we were going to be beaten by the principal for some misbehavior. And then of course beaten again at home for bringing disgrace to the family. As for spouse abuse, any southern woman knew that a good beating by her southern husband was a sign of his Christian love and fatherly care.

And while I don't want to comment on race relations here, I can tell you that it was perfectly acceptable and laudable when I was young in the American South to lynch a nigger if he looked too long at a white woman. And a few years before that, black men, women, and children were the lawful, God-ordained property of white men to do with them as they pleased.

And yet all of that is entirely illegal and thoroughly reprehensible now. I thought it was then, and if I was in danger of being beaten when I was young, it was because I was a well- known nigger lover who spoke out against violence against blacks, women, and children. And I was told repeatedly that I was stupid for being concerned; that God made the races and genders separate and unequal and that I should learn to act like a man. Well, now men cannot legally or morally beat their wives or children, and so-called interracial marriages and families are entirely the norm where I live now. And I won't even mention attitudes and policies towards what is often called `police brutality', then and now. All of this change came within my own lifetime.

So I see a very great deal of moral and ethical and legal improvement in our world - and the possibility of much more.

Clearly the American and Australian positions and actions on the War on Terror are wrong in every aspect, I believe. Clearly the dominant American attitude and policies towards incarceration and capital punishment are wrong as well. And while the war on terrorism escalates and the number of people armed to kill each other grows, so does moral outrage, and policies and practices of non-killing and non-violence.

Though it may be ridiculous, it is not irresponsible to imagine and work for a society that does not have armed police or military at all. And if you want to know more about why I feel that way, I urge you to read the work of one of my colleagues at the University of Hawaii named Glenn Paige. He has done more detailed and realistic as well as inspiring work on what a non-killing society might look like and how it might be achieved than any other person on the planet. And of course, he is roundly rejected and ridiculed for his belief and work.

One of the issues that has long been on my mind is the impending end of the nation-state and the international system. I wrote several articles about that for The Futurist and the World Future Society Bulletin in the late 1970s when `globalisation' meant the emergence of global governance and not the global triumph of the neoliberal economic system, which is what the term means now. But in both instances, there were many people anticipating the weakening and eventual demise of the nation-state and the emergence of global governance perhaps led by major global corporations. Those voices have been muted since 9/11 when the US brought back triumphant nationalism with a vengeance and thus

11


has inspired many other national leaders around the world to do the same - Prime Minister Abe of Japan being the most recent in a string of such leaders. So announcements of the death of the nation-state may be premature.

Still, I have had several discussions with American military leaders in Washington recently asking them how long they think the US can remain a strong nation but a weak state. That is, how long will Americans remain loyal to the symbols of `America' as a nation when the US federal state is so purposely weakened by debt, scandal, and neoliberal ideology that it is incapable of governing anything - as the Federal government's non-response to Hurricane Katrina (not to mention the `democratisation' of Iraq) made very clear?

While interpreting American elections is akin to reading the entrails of a dead chicken given the structural restraints of the single-member district system, it may be that one meaning of the outcome of the 2006 mid term elections is that US voters have fi nally said that they want America to re-join the global community - if the global community will have us - as a participant and not as a bully. If so, creating effective and democratic global governance beyond the nation-state might be on the agenda once again. Certainly addressing environmental issues effectively requires a global governance system. And there are many other reasons for pursuing global governance as well.

If the nation-state system were to end, then who would be `the police' and who would they serve?

So `collapse' has many meanings, and many consequences that need to be carefully explored, I believe, before you set your Police Act too fi rmly on paper and in practice.

A third alternative future: A disciplined society

Of course, collapse - whether of the society or of the police - is no more inevitable than is their continued growth. These are just two possible futures. A third is often a preferred alternative to both collapse and continued growth. I call it, generically, a disciplined society. It also comes in many varieties.

There are many people who feel that the price of continued economic growth is just too high. It is too high not only environmentally, but also culturally. Neoliberal capitalism is not only eating our planet, they say, but it is devouring our heart and soul. It is changing us from loving, family-oriented, sharing and caring members of meaningful communities, and turning us into selfi sh, self-centered, narrow-minded, individualistic consumers. Whether rich or poor, we have no other interest than to try to have more things and make more money to the detriment of all other values and human concerns. Such a way of life is not only not worth living, it is pathological, many believe.

And it may be unsustainable as we destroy the very planet upon which all life is dependent. Many people argue that we must stop this maniacal pursuit of economic growth and become focused around some set of cultural and/or environmental values, values that perhaps once sustained humans quite well for millennia, or that at least now need to be invented if we are to survive and thrive once again.

I am certain there are many people and groups here in New Zealand who express concerns of this kind, though I did not see them very prominently displayed in the material I have read. There are comments about `sustainability' perhaps, but within the continued growth image of the future, it seemed to me.

12


Nonetheless, there is a growing conversation about sustainability all over the world, and some few important actions in that direction. However, I for one prefer the concept `evolvability' since `sustainability' suggests something static and rigid, while evolvability implies life-enhancing change both on the part of the organism or institution and on the part of the environment within which the organism or institution is in a symbiotic relationship.

But more than that, I actually think we are well past the time where we can `sustain' any thing. Nature is dead. Nature - in the sense of places and processes untouched by human activities - does not exist anywhere, not even in these most wonderful of southern islands. The human task now, as Walter Truett Anderson said some years ago, is "to govern evolution". We live in an artifi cial world that is becoming ever more artifi cial, and we need to do something that humans have never had to do before, and that is to create a new environment fi t for humans as well as for all of the other creatures with whom humans once shared this beautiful planet; creatures whose lives and environments we increasingly, irresponsibility, and unfairly threatened and all too often have extinguished.

Learning to govern evolution, envisioning the kind of world we would like to create, and then creating that brave new world may well be beyond the capabilities of humans, who, like most children, are much better at tearing the blocks down than in setting them up again. We humans evolved into a wonderfully sustaining wilderness that we soon turned into a garden that required our perpetual and intensive care. We are now seriously in danger of turning that garden into an iron lung - a metaphor that perhaps only those of you who remember the days when polio was rampant will appreciate. So the alternative is not `sustainability' - it is centuries too late for that. Rather, it is for us to envision, invent and then carefully manage a cybernetic environment that merges whatever can grow with whatever needs to be manufactured into an evolvable and pleasant artifi cial world.

A fourth alternative future: A transformational society

Which gets us to our fourth and fi nal generic future. I call it the `Transformational Society'. One version of it assumes that the world that is rapidly emerging from the post-industrial information society - itself a relative newcomer to the global scene - can be called `a dream society of icons and aesthetic experience'. It is itself a step beyond what the Japanese, Koreans, and some Europeans are calling the `Ubiquitous Society' - a world where tiny computers are embedded in everything all around us, becoming as common as and as essential as the very air we breathe - to a world where the distinction between humans, artifi cial intelligence, and biological modifi ed intelligent cybernetic-organisms, and indeed the distinction between life and non-life, is blurred; where most mental as well as manual labor is performed not by humans, but by robots, cyborgs, and artilects, leaving humans free to dream, create, play and pray. It is based on developments in electronic and biological communication that sees emerging new forms of life and intelligence already prefi gured in robots, artifi cial intelligence, and varieties of cyborgs all around us now, and eagerly looks forward to the emergence of various forms of posthumans and other kinds of intelligent and non-intelligent life driven by the abundant energy of life, and not by the residue of fossils, and on new methods and materials that now often go by the name of nanotechnology.

In the transition to this world, humanity will be challenged to learn to love and live with many new species that may stretch our tolerance and understanding to the breaking point. If many of us have problems dealing with cultural differences now, wait until our daughter says she intends to marry a robot. And when that robot tells us our daughter isn't worth marrying.

13


Folks, these alternative futures are not science fi ction. Though they may seem unimaginable now, just as the present would seem utterly unimaginable to the inhabitants of these islands - or any other place - a few hundred years ago, they are true possibilities for which we now must plan. I believe that any useful plan for the future needs to be based on these alternative futures, and not on the assumption that the trends, possibilities and challenges that overwhelm the present will continue to be the major problems and opportunities of the future.

Your responsibility towards future generations

Dator's Second Law of the Futures says that any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous. You may make your Police Act and the plan based upon it safe and comfortable and acceptable - and potentially useless. Or you may dare to prepare for and take advantage of the many new and renewed opportunities in these alternative futures, while expecting to be ridiculed for your courage and foresight.

So who do you want to please? People now, or future generations?

The wellbeing of future generations is in your hands. Don't disappoint them. When future generations trace their genealogy back to you, let them be proud of the vision and courage you displayed on their behalf. Don't make them ashamed of your cowardice and irresponsibility. At the same time, you do have responsibilities for people in the present, and so your plan must balance the needs both of living and of future generations. Achieving the balance takes wisdom and compassion as well as courage, but I know you can do it. And I challenge you to try. In the words of William H. Danforth: "I dare you."

14


New Zealand respondent

Greg O'Connor

President, New Zealand Police Association

In his role as respondent to the keynote address, Greg O'Connor provided a view of New Zealand's future from a New Zealand Police Association perspective.

Greg is a Senior Sergeant of Police seconded full time to the elected position of President of the NZ Police Association. The Police Association represents 8,400 sworn police offi cers and, almost uniquely among Police Associations, also represents the non-sworn civilian staff of Police. The NZ Police Association's primary role is to ensure that the voice and experience of frontline police is heard and considered when policy and strategy is being created and implemented which will affect the law and order environment. Greg's background in Police is in General Duties, CIB and in Undercover. He has served in Wellington, Porirua, Masterton, Royal NZ Police College and Christchurch. At an international level, he currently chairs the International Police Council of Police Representatives Association, the international body of Police Associations. He also sits on the Board of APPSC (Australasian Police Professional Standards Council) and as an observer on the Police Federation of Australia.

Thank you for the opportunity to represent the view of the New Zealand Police Association at this forum. The Police Association endeavours to be a well informed voice of its membership on policing matters and it is pleasing to note that police associations and police unions around the world are now more and more being seen as legitimate participants in the policing environment including police reform. I have been fortunate to be part of two signifi cant international academic forums recently addressing police reform and I strongly believe practitioners and academics benefi t from the resultant exchange of views and ideas.

Any discussion on police, policing or law and order should begin with an understanding not just of the environment we police in, but also of what industry we are all in. It is my contention that we are all in the fear of crime industry. From the security guard on the door of a nightclub to the Minister in Charge of Policing, to the leading criminologist at the local University, to the police offi cer in the i-car, we all exist to reassure those who directly or indirectly are responsible for our appointment that we are contributing to the safety of society. The owner of the nightclub knows he won't make money unless people can come to his business and they will only come if he can control the activity within to reassure his patrons. The Minister of Police is entrusted by her peers to ensure voters feel that the government is acting to make them safe from crime, and even criminologists only receive the funding to study their science on the premise that such study will ultimately enable the understanding necessary to improve the safety of society.

It is my contention that were there no crime, there would be no fear of crime, and therefore none of us, whether we be police offi cers, support staff, forensic scientist or judge would be required to exist. Given this is the industry we are all in, discussion around any legislation which governs or impacts on a signifi cant component of that industry, namely the public police, is always going to be heavily infl uenced by all the other players in that industry. I would argue that in the fear of crime industry, it is the public police which are the most obvious component, if not necessarily the most important. They are the most obvious because they are visible, and have traditionally been looked to by society to deal with civil disorder and the victimisation from which the fear of crime grows.

However, as I have discussed, there are many other components of the industry, to each of which the fear of crime is an important factor. At the poles are the private security firms and

15


the politicians. The degree of fear of crime is important for the survival of both groups. For the private security firm, the higher the better, for the government the lower the better. For the public police, with no vested interest either way other than public service, they are to a certain extent in the middle of the conflicting priorities of the extreme.

The Commissioner or Police Chief is tasked with maintaining public order, reducing the incidence of crime and apprehending and prosecuting those responsible for breaching the law; essentially being the public's representative using the resource and powers necessary to keep the citizens safe. The Commissioners and each of their Constables are given the power to do what the citizens, through their government, require them to do. They develop an individual and institutional craft and specialist knowledge which enables them to do this to the best of their ability. However, what has occurred in most countries, including New Zealand, is that crime and consequently the fear of crime, has risen over recent decades. The public police have been unable to suffi ciently reassure the public that they are as safe as they wish to be. Evidence of this has been the growth of the private security industry which I would argue grows at the same rate as the fear of crime.

What has also happened is that considerable pressure has gone on governments to deal with their constituents' fear of crime. Increased media portrayal of crime, both actual and as entertainment through the television, movie and book industry has raised public awareness of crime and its consequences. This real and imagined belief that society is an increasingly dangerous place has led to electoral demands that something be done to reduce crime.

Politicians ignore such demands at their electoral peril. They respond by being seen to invest more in law and order, often through the obvious means of increasing police and related budgets. Being electorally conscious of the need for such spending to be obvious to the voters, the politicians are anxious to have a considerable say over how such money will be spent. Increased funding will inevitably come with demands for accountability and with increased compliance to ensure it is spent where intended by the politicians, thus giving rise to increased bureaucracy and the need for measurability.

Advice and direction of how resource is best spent, and which strategies and philosophies should be employed are sought from many sources outside policing, including academia, other government departments, private industry, and community groups. Politicians seek to ensure funding is directed in the area they think best by directing and tagging the funding to areas which are both obvious to the electorate and are measurable. By this method, they are able to establish a degree of control over the way police is operated; a classic case of he who pays the piper calling the tune.

A major risk develops if the area in which the funding is directed, or the philosophy imposed on police is not compatible with the realities of delivering a full policing service, one maintains the necessary balance of policing activity across a broad spectrum. By the time problems become media, thus political issues, often there have been failures in other areas that need to be addressed before the symptom can be addressed. The increase in methamphetamine use in New Zealand is an excellent example of this, where police offi cers were aware of the extent of the problem long before the symptoms of abuse of the drug, such as the rise in violent crime and the entrenchment of organised crime became obvious to the electorate. An opportunity to attack to problem before it became unmanageable was lost because of a failure to direct resource into the area due to it not having been recognised by the expert advisors or the funders.

16


This really brings me to the main point of my presentation. There will always be crime and an accompanying fear of crime. There will always be a demand from the public to reduce both, especially of politicians. The resource available is unlikely ever to meet the demand, therefore there will always be a temptation by politicians to direct funding to areas of most public concern, and to apply a measurement regime to ensure that resources are properly distributed. This inevitably leads to specialisation within police. Youth offending, drug offending, burglaries, road policing and minority policing are areas to which funding is directed as these are areas where politicians can point out that funding has increased.

The problem is the inevitable unmet demand will be carried in other areas, invariably areas that are diffi cult to measure. 24/7 response is the most obvious sector. This is the area of traditional policing where other agencies are increasingly fi lling the gap in public demand. Organisations such as Wellington's Walk Wise are a combination of both, being private security guards employed by a private fi rm who are funded by the Council. They are essentially contracted to walk the beat in Wellington CBD and satisfy the demand for safety that is not able to be met by the public police. This situation is replicated throughout New Zealand; private fi rms can be found patrolling the wealthier suburbs of most New Zealand cities. They are rarely found in the lower socio economic areas, other than patrolling commercial premises.

The question of whether it matters who does the job is a topic on its own, but the point is that the Commissioners are left with little discretion to use their knowledge of their policing craft to decide where policing resource is best deployed, where they are able to be directed by political masters. As more and more unmet demand is picked up by other groups, including government and local government organisations, there is a serious risk of duplication and ineffi ciencies, a feature of policing in countries like the United States and Canada where thousands of independent forces operate. In those areas, local cities and councils generally fund police with a wide variation in the level of service delivery, and a vastly increased amount of political infl uence over police strategy and even operation. So, if we are to continue down this track, not only is there likely to be more political infl uence, there will be more political organisations seeking to infl uence policing direction.

What is important then in New Zealand is that, with the appropriate level of accountability and compliance, police commissioners should be able to rely on their knowledge of the policing craft to best police their area of responsibility. An analogy is getting ones car repaired. You can tell the mechanic to fi x the vehicle within a set budget or alternatively, give him set and measurable instructions on what to do to the car, what to replace and what to recondition. The mechanic can carry out your instructions, but the car may still not be fi xed at the completion of the job.

Reducing crime and fear of crime is the goal of most of those involved in the fear of crime industry. Ensuring those with a vested interest in this fear being reduced or increased, do not have control of the policing agenda is an important feature of cornerstone legislation like the Police Act. Every decision which affects policing must be taken in the context of how it will impact on the whole police and policing industry.

In summary, maintaining an adequate funding base to deliver core non specialist policing is not as attractive to political funders as directing new or existing funding towards a defi nable and media attractive area. Continuing to silo funding into specialist non frontline areas of policing without maintaining other essential areas will simply create a greater gap between

17


what the public demand by way of 24/7 response and what can be provided. This gap will continue to be fi lled by other agencies operating outside any coordinated strategy and delivering a variable level of service and without the necessary economies of scale in the case of public policing.

The inevitable fragmentation of delivery will result in the public receiving a more expensive and less effective response to their policing needs. It is essential that police commissioners have the fl exibility to allocate their policing services according to a strategy designed to cut the incidents and fear of crime without being forced to police according to strategies designed to cater to the constituency with the greatest political leverage.

Any new legislation like the Police Act must be created as part of a wider strategy. That strategy should be to make our citizens the safest in the world by reducing crime. Legislation which ensures that decisions made around public policing are made in an informed and co- ordinated manner is essential.

18


Session 1

Principles/Foundations of policing

This session, moderated by His Excellency, Mr. George Fergusson, British High Commissioner, was designed to locate policing within both an historical and international context, so leading to a clear foundation for the subsequent discussions. The discussions began with the cradle of New Zealand policing (the UK models), with a presentation by HMI Jane Stichbury from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, through to Paul Evans, an ex-Boston Police Commissioner, giving an outline of the North American experience of policing both historically and in terms of future directions. Professor Philip Stenning provided an overview of how the principles for policing emerged in New Zealand during the nineteenth century.

Jane Stichbury

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, UK

Jane Stichbury joined the Metropolitan Police Service on graduation from the University of London in 1977. The majority of her service with the `Met' was operationally based in South East London divisions. In 1996 Jane was appointed Commander (Crime) for Central London. Her responsibilities included leading on performance against crime, and crime policy development. She was subsequently selected against national competition for the post of Deputy to the Assistant Commissioner (1 Area) Metropolitan Police where responsibilities included overall performance, complaint investigation, civil actions, inspection and review and developing quality audit. In 1999 she was appointed as Chief Constable of Dorset and in 2001 she was appointed head of the Association of Chief Police Offi cers (ACPO) Personnel Management Business Area and chair of Police Skills and Standards Organisation (subsequently Vice Chair of the new Cross Agency Skills for Justice Organisation). In November 2003 she was elected 3rd Vice President of ACPO. Following 5½ years as Chief Constable of Dorset, Jane was appointed Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary with oversight of sixteen forces. Jane Stichbury received the CBE in the New Year's Honours 2004. She took up her new appointment as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Constabulary (South of England Region) in 2004.

It is a real honour to be asked to contribute to this symposium. The future direction of policing in New Zealand is a critical topic which touches every single member of society. The ability to secure a society and environment where individuals can fulfi l their potential and a country can thrive, is critical to the future wellbeing of a nation. You are engaged in a noble mission but one that requires very careful thought and consideration.

Overview

I have been asked to utilise my 30-year association with policing in the UK (MPS, Chief Constable Dorset, now HMI to 16 forces), to refl ect upon the UK operating context. Today I will be covering three main areas: the context of UK policing, and changes in modern UK society; how has policing developed and responded, where I will address three key areas of progress, Neighbourhood Policing, Protective Services and Workforce Modernisation; and fi nally, where to next in the UK.

I would wish to emphasise that policing and its developments really are a journey. The UK has a proud tradition in policing, although unfortunately, we have not always got it right. Increasingly over the last few years the emphasis has not only been on a renewed vision of and for policing, and therefore a new direction, but also on helping police and policing learn lessons about itself. So it is within this context that my address sits.

19


As we proceed, there are three points I would ask you to bear in mind. Firstly, that it is important in any programme of change to identify those values or traditions which must be carried forward, so to ask the question `what do you stand for?' In passing I would mention the recent Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) Thematic which I led ­ `Raising the standard'. The values and integrity of an organisation are all important and essential in re-defi ning policing. The second point to bear in mind is that investment in leadership at all levels is critical; people deliver, and they need help and support to ensure change is effective. The fi nal point is that there is always a point where more resources are desirable, but in reality they are fi nite. In the case of the UK, the projections are particularly constrained, hence new ways of working are fundamental to sustainability. This, I consider, is at the heart of the debate today. I suggest that the time is right for the police to engage others, more formally, in `policing society'.

Immediate context: The accountability framework

For those of you who may not be familiar with the accountability and structure of policing in the UK ­ it consists of 43 forces in England and Wales, one for Northern Ireland, eight for Scotland, and `national' forces/bodies including British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary, Ministry of Defence and Guarding Agency. The accountability of policing was set out by the 1962 Commission and the current structure was last signifi cantly altered in 1974. Since the Police Act 1996 accountability focuses on the tri-partite relationship of the Home Offi ce, the Chief Constable, and APA (locally the Police Authority).

HMIC is another body which contributes to that accountability. It has the clear role to ensure agreed standards are achieved and maintained, that good practice is spread, and performance is improved. Above all HMIC provides professional advice and support in all aspects of policing. Essentially, HMIC exists to promote improvement in policing.

The policing context: Changes in modern UK society

Signifi cant changes have occurred in policing since I joined the service in the late 1970s, and the environment remains excitingly dynamic! The vision of policing then echoed back to the `Primary Objects of an Effi cient Police' set out by Sir Richard Mayne ­ focused on preservation of life, prevention and detection of crime, protection of property and upholding `the Queen's Peace'. In fact Mayne saw the test of police effi ciency as "the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it". At this time policing (which was largely unarmed) relied upon public consent.

A critical feature of UK policing for so many years has been the fact that the offi ce of constable is independent and has discretion, but is accountable to the law. As I noted to the Morris Inquiry in 2004, "the pragmatic reality that consistently inspires the confi dence of the community is the undeniable fact that the offi ce is not directable and that it retains political independence and objectivity". Undoubtedly this principle is still held dear, but I shall show that those fulfi lling the policing role now include many who do not hold the offi ce of constable, particularly Police Community Support Offi cers (PCSOs), private security, and volunteers.

This `mixed economy' has arisen following a period which was very different to today. During the 1980s the service tended to be judged on performance against crime and `inputs' and activity rather than outcomes. Environmental scanning was beginning to pick up the implications of the Schengen Treaty and the dismantling of borders in Europe, while the service, certainly in the capital, was preoccupied with regular political demonstrations (for example, CND and Unions' demonstrations of the 1980s, including the Miners' strike)

20


and also disorder arising within local communities. The latter of which, at least in part, was a protest against policing style (evidenced by the disorders in Brixton in the 1980s). The need for an enhanced approach for victims of specifi c crimes was gathering recognition, and I was able to contribute to a whole new approach to domestic violence and race attacks in London, around 1985. During these years, along with the Brixton events, the ethos of policing was challenged by a perceived mistrust and lack of transparency; a rather more remote service delivery (often characterised as the police retreating to cars); a lack of appreciation of the needs of diverse communities; a perceived `heavy-handed' policing style; media reports of scandals/cause célèbre, hints of corruption, rumours of ill-treatment of detainees and so on. This was a world where the rights of individuals were not spelt out in the same way as they are now. A time before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act brought in safeguards for detainees and before Human Rights attained such prominence and the introduction of statutory obligation.

The risk facing the service at this time was an assumption that public support and confi dence was `a given.' There was a real danger that complacency would contribute to the erosion of the relationship with the public which relied upon `consent'. However the UK police service rose to the challenges and took proactive action to address the changes in society which were either already evident by the early 1990s or imminent. These broad changes in society have been depicted as:

· The loss of respect for governments/institutions; · A growing challenge of authority; · The growth of single issue politics; · Increasing pressure on funding; · Radical change in the nature of family relationships and working lives; · Growth of more diverse communities; · An increasing elderly population/tensions with youth; · Globalisation of crime ­ human traffi cking/internet fraud/terrorism; · The development of an `instant information' society/economy.

We could also add to this list a period of major migration of populations.

Essentially, policing at this time was at a crossroads. It was fundamentally rooted in a core role based on maintaining order. However, economic and social change indicated the increasing fragmentation of society and a resultant challenge to traditional approaches. The pace of change, perceived centralism/remoteness of government, perceived and actual changes to local communities has been viewed by some commentators as raising individual apprehension about personal safety. Crime trends show a period where property- related criminality was substantial (e.g. 70s); as the UK became more prosperous, people became increasingly concerned about personal safety and their environment. We continue to experience a situation where fear of crime far exceeds the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime. This period of great shift and change in UK society has continued and the 1990s and early twenty-fi rst century have witnessed critical events which have undoubtedly helped to change the face and direction of policing in the UK. Events of particular infl uence include the focus on local policing issues including volume crime and anti-social behaviour; Signal crimes, the murder of Stephen Lawrence and subsequent inquiry; the Soham murders, and resulting assessment of service failings, e.g. information sharing/intelligence; a recognition of the growth of more serious criminality which does not respect force or national borders; and the emergence of a global terrorist threat.

21


The pressures building over the late twentieth century for the service revealed a need to enhance capability and capacity.

How has policing developed I

Under this broad heading, I will focus here on three main developments:

· The commitment to a citizen-focused and local service -Neighbourhood Policing. · The determination to provide a truly effective response against more complex crime

­ increasingly referred to as `Protective Services'.

· Organisational change involving the development of a new framework for a diverse

workforce/the wider police family/career pathways ­ currently called `Workforce Modernisation'.

Before I delve into these developments, it is worth reminding ourselves that operational changes in recent years have taken place within a revised legislative framework. The Operational Policing Review, the Inquiry into Core and Ancillary Tasks, and the work of Patrick Sheehey led up to the Police Act (1996) which provided a change in a statutory obligation for Police Authorities to "secure the maintenance of an effi cient and effective police force for its area". Every police authority was obliged to publish a local policing plan with objectives for the year ahead. The local policing plan would also take account of the Secretary of State's objectives. The police authority would also set the precept, that an element of tax would relate to local policing. The overall direction continues to be set by the National Community Safety Plan which now includes other agencies in the aim to deliver safer communities. The direction and objectives are translated into delivery by local police forces with the Chief Constable held to account by the Police Authority.

Addressing operational challenges: Level 1 ­ addressing local policing issues

For many years the focus has been on improving performance against volume ­ level 1- crimes, which includes burglary, vehicle crime and robbery. Signifi cant achievements were recently highlighted as longer-term targets were set, e.g. over fi ve years, and were delivered. Crime statistics and the British Crime Survey showed while numbers of crimes were reducing, levels of fear of crime remained high, indicating a need for much greater reassurance of local people. However, it remains a challenge to maintain quality relationships with the public, and to adequately address their scepticism. The concepts of engagement and civil renewal were identifi ed as vital aspects of these relationships so Neighbourhood Policing moved to centre stage.

So, how was this model of police/public interaction different? Neighbourhood Policing involves real engagement with communities. Of particular interest was the approach to judging success; qualitative measures, such as what the `customers' (the public) actually thought about their local police service, have become the new criteria for success. Police performance in increasingly measured by sophisticated user satisfaction data. As an example of how this can be achieved, information is gathered from victims of crimes regarding their `whole experience', from initial response to feedback and updating about the progress of the case.

22


Where are we now?: Neighbourhood Policing ­ a citizen-focused service

Neighbourhood Policing is rolling out across forces with mixed teams, utilising PCSOs and others, with the complete model to be in place by April 2008. It works on the principles of:

· Access to policing for community safety services through a named contact · Infl uence ­ over community safety priorities in their neighbourhood · Interventions ­ Joint action with communities and partners to solve problems, following

the National Intelligence Model processes of tasking and assessment

· Answers ­ Sustainable solutions to problems and feedback on results

The overall aim is to ensure that the legitimate aim of policing is shored up by increasing public confi dence, promoting safety, reducing crime and disorder geared to each local context and concerns of local communities. Local commanders are challenged to answer these questions; do communities have confi dence that police understand the issues that matter to them? Do communities have confi dence that police are dealing with the issues that matter to them?

The strategy for developing safer neighbourhoods relies on dedicated teams of both police and partner resources, permanently deployed to a local neighbourhood. Police often play a co-ordinating role in the wider team which likely includes Community Support Offi cers, other agencies, volunteers and so on. Due to the pivotal role individual offi cers play, greatest success is evident where there is a well-implemented policy preventing and/ or minimising abstractions of dedicated offi cers. Specifi c `tactics' for closer engagement include on-street briefi ngs, testing out in quick time what the public think of the service, programmes to develop understanding of customer service, and proactive management of a communication strategy internally and externally.

One of the most important early outcomes has been the fact that the service cannot assume it knows what matters to local people or concerns them or frightens them. It must LISTEN to be fully engaged and in tune with local issues. A way to summarise this approach can be with the following aide-mémoire:

Listen to people in the community and take their concerns seriously; Inspire confi dence ­ help people feel secure; Support with information ­ give contact details and tell people what is happening

locally;

Take ownership ­ tell people what you can do to help solve the problem ­ make realistic

promises;

Explain what the team can and can't do and next steps; Notify people of action agreed, progress and fi nal outcomes.

However, neighbourhood policing requires leadership at every level, and relies on National Intelligence Model (NIM) to carry out its purpose, i.e. to engage communities in a systematic way to identify issues, agree priorities and take action.

As I note above, the Neighbourhood Policing strategy must be fully in place by April 2008, but it does not stop there, it will hopefully continue to grow and develop. There is a real drive to ensure that a holistic approach is taken to safer neighbourhoods, and that all parties/ agencies play their full part in this process. Furthermore, the work in neighbourhoods (i.e.

23


at level 1) is essential to more effective working in respect of cross-border and national criminality. There are signifi cant levels of connectivity and relevance to other aspects of criminality, thus Neighbourhood Policing must be integral to the whole police role.

How has policing developed II: Level 2 ­ crime and protective services

Now, move on to my second main theme under the `where to now' heading, protective services. Often these services address areas which are not seen or experienced on an everyday basis by the public, but which inevitably impact on quality of life or safety in local communities, some examples include drugs, prostitution and so on. National issues in this area are addressed by SOCA (Serious and Organised Crime Agency); however, over the last 18 months the debate regarding the operational challenges of level 2 crime has intensifi ed. To provide more information, HMIC were asked to examine Protective Services. The Protective Services assessed included: Major Crime, Serious, Organised and Cross- Border crime, Counter-terrorism/Extremism, Civil Contingencies, Critical Incidents, Public Order and Strategic Roads Policing, and Public Protection/Vulnerable people.

HMIC were tasked to review the current structure of policing and answer the following question, in the light of current and projected demands `Is the current structure fi t for purpose?'. You will probably know that the answer, contained in my colleague HMI Denis O'Connor's report `Closing the Gap', was subsequently `No'. Creation of a number of strategic forces was proposed, but as you are no doubt aware, mergers are currently off the agenda, with the focus being on building capability and capacity through collaborative endeavour.

In spite of this result, the issues contained within `Closing the gap' are relevant to the discussion about a new Police Act for New Zealand. The range of threat experienced in the UK is one aspect clearly applicable to New Zealand. The UK National Strategic Assessment highlighted terrorism, Class A drugs (a £7bn market), organised immigration crime, economic crime, fi rearms, serious and organised crime (a £40bn+ business), and that the overall crime trends of the previous ten years showed serious criminality profoundly increasing. `Closing the gap' concluded that it was imperative to re-design police services to grow capability and capacity to deliver protective services to national standards.

Simultaneously there were opportunities to enhance business support/IT/Finance/HR to increase effi ciency.

The challenges for the UK, highlighted within the report, have not gone away simply because certain ideas are not currently appealing. CIFAS, the UK's fraud prevention service tells us that fraud has increased some 58% in eight years. Another powerful example was the declared fact that typically less than 8% of over 1500 organised crime groups acting at force or regional level are targeted by police on an annual basis. While at the time of the `Closing the gap' report, only 13 of the 43 forces had dedicated Major Investigation Teams to address this growing group of offences.

Central to this debate is the ability of the service to respond to clear standards nationally. While the approach to the solution may have changed, the issues and challenges raised by the analysis are being addressed. A clear framework of standards is emerging and HMIC will be inspecting and assessing those areas of police work as a priority for next year. It is perhaps not surprising that Protective Services attracted some of the lower assessments this year. This remains, with Neighbourhood Policing, the key challenge for delivery. But, what does success look like?

24


Positive outcomes include the creation of Major Investigation Teams (delivering enhanced skills and capability, increased effectiveness, and reductions in abstracting offi cers from divisions), the development of enhanced risk assessments and preventative strategies e.g. with regard to domestic violence and vulnerable people. Critical to the approach is the utilisation of the NIM, and the process of the Force Strategic Assessment a control strategy with rigorous tasking and review.

The challenge now remains to fi nd other ways to enhance the capability of the service to address the `gap'. Forces have been directed by the Home Secretary to propose `collaborations', and police professionals and police authorities are examining proposals they consider will deliver enhanced benefi t and service to the public. Some of the questions being considered here include the potential to procure and/or purchase capability from others. Some aspects, for example protecting vulnerable people, clearly require a level of response from the local force or unit. Other aspects, such as counter-terrorism, might be better addressed on a national basis, so the debate continues. HMIC will also be involved in assessing all of these proposals, and Protective Services are now the focus of inspection plans for 2007.

How has policing developed III: Organisational change ­ the wider police family

The third area of focus and development is that of organisational change to support the two key strategies of Neighbourhood Policing and the approach to more complex crime.

The Royal Commission in 1962 identifi ed the ever changing nature of society as being important and the need for policing to be able to adapt through the generations. However, it did not specify who should undertake any tasks, an issue tackled in 1995 by the Home Offi ce `Review of Core and Ancillary Tasks'.

Under this review, inner core was defi ned as those tasks involving the exercise of police powers and/or the potential use of legitimate force, which should be delivered by police constables. Outer core tasks were those which could be delivered within a framework of accountability for the police service. Potentially these tasks could be managed by the police service, but the method of delivery may alternatively involve offi cers, civilians, special constables or be contracted out of the service entirely.

As a result of the agenda for police reform, the mixed economy model involving both police and other agencies or organisations is increasingly the norm within the UK. As discussed above relating to the concept of neighbourhood policing examples range from the deployment of PCSOs as part of Neighbourhood Teams to volunteers helping to ensure local stations are kept open or have their hours extended. Security fi rms cover both detention and certainly prisoner transport, while civilian investigators likewise are increasingly utilised. There is enormous potential to expand into other areas, such as surveillance.

A major initiative is now underway to explore and test a new approach to workforce planning and subsequent develop and offering opportunities to diversify the workforce and gain fl exibility for local `bespoke' solutions. So, for example, other groups may increasingly perform front-line tasks but be co-ordinated or led by a police offi cer. The offi ce of constable (and with it implicit political independence) would continue to be central to the new model, but fresh aspects include a single mission service and the reward of skills performance and expertise (as opposed to long service).

25


HMIC will have a role in assessing the readiness for some of the sites proposed for these developments. One likely outcome will be the extension of the number of non sworn offi cers perhaps beyond the areas introduced by the Police Reform Act 2002 (PCSOs, investigating offi cers, detention and escort). This process of Workforce Modernisation will emphasise the place of accreditation, strategic career pathways, and the development of a modernised employment framework.

Two key elements are policing capabilities ­ framework for increased specialisation/greater mix of staff/accreditation ­ and skill and competency levels ­ creating an inclusive model for all staff. The benefi ts of this process are the ability to recognise current and future skill gaps, a reduction in cost, and the ability to attract, retain and reward the most talented members of the organisation.

Leadership, as ever, remains a critical factor at all levels in an environment where greater focus, supervisory coaching and support are vital. High achieving forces invariably invest in supporting and developing leaders at all levels. From my perspective I see outstanding examples of delivery against the odds ­ even with a poor resourcing profi le, and I have no doubt that it is the quality of leadership which is a critical success factor.

Where to next in the UK?

Today I have outlined challenges facing UK policing over the last ten years and the key strategies currently being pursued ­ a citizen focused service embodied in neighbourhood policing, tackling more serious and organised criminality (nationally and beyond via SOCA/ cross force/regionally via the Protective Services agenda), the work to enhance capability and capacity through the service resourcing remains a critical issue/particularly in the light of competition (e.g. prisons and CT). We have all been reminded within the last week of the continuing fragility of communities and for the UK the need to address radicalisation of youth and certain sections of society has never been greater. The vision and aim remain to nurture safer communities and protect citizens and in everyday parlance to continue to see crime fall, satisfaction rise and offences brought to justice increasing, instilling confi dence in the criminal justice system. In the complex environment of the policing landscape strong leadership ­ professional and political ­ is essential. Most recently a National Policing Board has been established together with the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). This will undoubtedly initiate even stronger strategic direction, complemented by a support and developmental capability. The Home Secretary left no one in any doubt recently when he declared to Chief Offi cers and Chairs of Police Authorities "Reform is something required from all of us ­ the status quo is not an option". It is likely that there will be an even greater drive to move resources to areas of greatest need.

So where does this all leave us? Looking ahead for the UK, I see a number of things, the framework of accountability will be enhanced. Regarding performance monitoring, The Police and Justice Act is likely to strengthen joint responsibility for delivery, and bring further fl exibility/potential to extend powers for civilians. The performance framework is likely to be `reduced'. The National Policing Board will take on `commissioning' role for police service such as IT projects. The Police Service itself will have to grow capacity, seeking ways to develop the integrated model. It will need to develop new ways to communicate with the public, and share more honestly the dilemmas and challenges facing society. Above all there is a need for something I call `corporate leadership' essentially thinking about the corporate good and service to the public in the long term rather than parochialism. There will be a need to surrender some individual infl uence for the wider good.

26


My personal hopes are that the service grasps the opportunities to engage more fully with local people, that leaders ensure the Service is well positioned for 5/10/15 years ahead and that increasingly national standards prevail so that changes are driven forward. This is vital to the sustainability of policing, as guardians of safer communities.

I personally support and drive the development of a less risk-averse organisation, and favour a service which is curious, prepared to break out of traditional moulds; inspiring, engaged and determined to deliver best possible service; committed to strong relationship building, and frank communication. New approaches to the workforce will, over time, ensure that policing more closely refl ects the communities served.

Conclusion

While here in New Zealand I took the opportunity to ask some local people what they wanted of their police. I found much residual support and a tremendous enthusiasm to engage (particularly among businesses). Visibility is critical, and as ever the importance of managing expectation and having an excellent communication strategy cannot be over-emphasised. One quote perhaps summarised my soundings and demonstrates the enduring nature of Robert Peel's 1829 principles, that any changes could create a `police force by the people, for the people'.

As we continue our drive in the UK to tackle the challenges of achieving a new level of engagement with local people and enhanced capability with regard to complex criminality and the threat of terrorism, I would encourage you all in your current review of policing in New Zealand. You have a marvellous opportunity in seeking a new Police Act for New Zealand. I urge you to be bold.

27


Paul Evans

Director, Police and Crime Standards Directorate, Home

Office, UK

Paul Evans took up his post as Director of the Police and Crime Standards Directorate (PCSD) in November 2003. PCSD delivers the UK Government's commitment to raise standards and improve operational performance in crime reduction and to maintain and enhance public satisfaction with policing in their area. Its core objective is to identify and disseminate best practice in the prevention and detection of crime in all forces, in order to reduce crime and disorder as well as the fear of crime. Mr. Evans joined the Boston Police Department (USA) in 1970 as a patrol offi cer and worked his way to Police Commissioner, a post he held from 1994 until his appointment at the Home Offi ce; one of the longest serving major city Police Commissioners in the USA. Whilst Commissioner he oversaw the largest reductions in crime and homicide in the city's history and was noted for working with partnerships to deliver a high quality of service to the public.

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the debate surrounding the New Zealand Police Act review. Today I will be focusing on my experience with the United Kingdom and United States criminal justice systems, and particularly on their different policing systems and structures.

Brief overview

The United Kingdom currently has 43 separate police forces (recent discussions around amalgamations have ceased) operating under a tri-partite system with shared responsibility among the Home Secretary, ACPO (Association of Chief Police Offi cers) and the APA (Association of Police Authorities). The Home Offi ce's role in this system is to provide the priority of funding and it exerts a considerable infl uence, particularly with setting PSA (Public Service Agreements) performance frameworks and so on. Chief Constables on each of the 43 forces exercise by law operational independence. Recently the government has established a new agency, Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which has been designed to combat high level criminal organisations. While SOCA is sponsored by the Home Offi ce, it is operationally independent.

The situation in the US is quite different. There are three levels of policing in the United States that are publicly funded: 1. Federal level ­ agencies at this level are funded completely by central government with the main players being the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). There are also other federal enforcement agencies, all with jurisdictional responsibility and authority throughout the country. Each agency has responsibility that is limited to specifi c fi elds. 2. State level ­ each of the 50 states has its own state police, with jurisdictional responsibly for the entire state. As the name would suggest, state police are funded by the state and are accountable to the state's governor. Duties of the state police would include: supporting local police, conducting major investigations, homicides, organized crime and road policing for major federal highways. 3. Local level ­ there are more than 18,000 police agencies in the US, ranging in size from part time employees to 30,000 offi cers. The vast majority of these are departments with fewer than 100 offi cers, whose primary responsibility is to deal with the demand of police services within the confi nes of their jurisdiction and to deal with local crime problems.

28


Funding and accountability

In the UK, central government is the major contributor to police funding, supported by a local tax. In the United States, only the federal agencies are funded by central government, while funding for state and local police comes from local government. Accountability is aligned with funding in both countries. So in the UK central government has considerable sway on priorities due to its role as the majority funder, whereas in the US state and local government control their priorities.

An example of how these situations play out in practical terms is the thorny issue of immigration. In the UK the Home Secretary was able to direct local forces to apprehend foreign prisoners, whereas in the States requests of local and state offi cials to deal with immigration illegals has generally met with opposition.

Short analysis of advantages and disadvantages of each system

The UK system of centralised control of police services has certain advantages: the ability to deploy resources faster; all forces/services operate in similar systems; it is more cost effective; there is far greater accountability, and responsivity; and it has the ability to establish standards that apply across the entire country. Although there are also inherent disadvantages: there are acknowledged gaps in fi ghting cross border crime; capacity issues surround major incidents and terrorism for smaller forces; and there is a much greater bureaucracy due to the nature of centralised control.

In assessing the American system of multi-level police services, there are also a number of advantages: more accountability for local issues which is then retained at a local level; overlapping resources and state and federal uncommitted forces allow for focus on higher crime; joined up task forces bring the best of each level to the crime fi ghting arena; and there are more options of policing services for the consumer. Disadvantages of this system include that it can be very expensive and uncoordinated; it suffers from `turf war'; it is not responsive to central control unless recognised as high level crisis; performance is often highly varied with wealthier communities affording greater levels of protection; and there are no minimum standards.

Private security agencies/police agencies

Given this brief summary of policing in the UK and US, it is also valuable to consider the growing demand for security services beyond what publicly-funded police can and do provide. As crime has become a bigger and bigger issue in the twentieth century, private security fi rms and policing agencies have emerged, often as a result of lawsuits. The accusation that public police have `failed to protect' citizens, and particularly private fi rms and institutions, has provided major leverage.

The demand for private security has sky-rocketed in many areas as it fi lls a void that publicly funded police are unable to meet. For example Boston, Massachusetts, a force I led, now has more than 32 police-type agencies with full police powers operating within the confi nes of the city. Private security is best utilised when properly regulated licensed and trained. It is mandatory that they are responsive to local police ­ often they have police powers but only on the specifi c premise they are employed under, and any and all crimes that come to their attentions should be reported. Examples of these specialised and limited

29


powers would be policing agencies dealing with transportation would be limited to just that or others dealing with university campuses would have specialist powers limited to the particular campus.

However, there are a number of challenges with having multiple and varied agencies operating in one area, the most important of which is a matter of control; there must be one public agency with overall responsibility for public safety. Coordination, information sharing and leadership must rest with that institution and must be well organised.

The community's role in policing

Up to this point we have focused on the different methods, structure systems if you will, of private and public policing organisations. A discussion of policing and its future, would be incomplete without reference to the role of the community, the most critical and valuable partner.

Community policing, neighbourhood policing, or however it is described, has been a buzzword of policing for the last 25 years. There is widespread recognition that the community plays an absolutely vital role in policing, however, the degree to which it is truly embraced falls on the responsibility of a few offi cers and is often markedly varied. Policing in the twenty-fi rst century, with its increasing demands, requires a true partnership with communities. People live in these communities, they know the issues, the problem and they are often in the position of formulating the solution ­ no one has more of a vested interest in the safety of the neighbourhood than they do. In terms of their wants for policing, the public want policing to be personal; they want to know who their local offi cers are, they want to help identify problems and then work together to solve them.

Whether it is fi ghting crime, either at a national or local level, success will depend on our ability to engender trust in the public, trust will only develop when communities feel their priorities and concerns are recognised and acknowledged and they have a say in the strategies that are employed to combat these. Basically the public should not merely be a receipt of a service but should actually have a seat at the table as strategies and priorities are determined. People are realistic ­ they may have unrealistic expectations when they have no understanding of resources and demands, and in my experience honest dialogue will often cure this problem. While police must learn that they cannot be all things to all people, they must clearly demonstrate that agreed upon priorities for police and communities is the way of the future, and that above all community safety is everyone's job. We must set out to make that a reality in which everyone has a role to play.

30


Professor Philip Stenning

Centre for Criminological Research, Keele University, UK

Philip Stenning is currently Professor at the Centre for Criminological Research at Keele University, UK. He was previously Professor and Director of the Institute of Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington from 2003 to 2005, and before that was at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto from 1968 to 2002. Early in 2006 year he was one of several international experts invited to advise the government of Venezuela on reform of the police there. He has previously advised governments and commissions in Canada, South Africa and Northern Ireland on such matters, and in 2005, he co-edited a special issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology on Reforming Police: An International Perspective. Professor Stenning has a BA (Hons.) from Cambridge University, an LLM from York University, Canada, and an SJD (Doctor of Laws) from the University of Toronto. His doctoral thesis was on the legal aspects of the status and political accountability of the police in Canada.

Emerging principles for policing in New Zealand - a review of the

historical background

When Captain William Hobson landed in Aotearoa to establish British sovereignty over the land in January 1840, he brought with him just fi ve mounted troopers of the New South Wales Mounted Police to help him keep order in the new colony. It quickly became evident, however, that a much more substantial and organised force was going to be required to maintain order both within the scattered and rapacious European settlers here, and between the settlers and the indigenous Mäori population. So in October 1846, an ordinance was promulgated for the establishment of an armed Constabulary Force for the colony.

The Constabulary Force was essentially a military organisation, modelled on the Royal Irish Constabulary that Britain had established to pacify the Irish population and suppress any resistance to British rule there. Although styled `Constables', the members of the Constabulary Force were in essence trained, mounted soldiers equipped with military rifl es. Section 4 of the 1846 Ordinance made it clear that the principal duty of the Force was to "suppress all tumults riots affrays or breaches of the peace, and all public nuisances and offences against the law, in any part of the colony where they may be on duty."

This policing model, which Britain had introduced into all of its colonies during the nineteenth century, remained the dominant policing model in New Zealand throughout the nineteenth century, such that by the end of the century police were still be described as "the right arm of the ruling class" and "effi cient and proactive agents of offi cial morality" (Hill, 1995: 30, 31).

It was not, in fact, until 1886 that a process of moving away from this model of repressive policing began with the passage of the Police Force Act and, in the following year, of new Police Regulations and Instructions. The most important feature of this new regime was that for the fi rst time it separated the police force from the armed militia, and began the process of establishing police as a civilian body whose members were not routinely armed with fi rearms. I say `began the process' because this was not a transformation that occurred quickly, but rather one that unfolded gradually over a period of about 40 years. Initially, recruitment to the new police force was to be exclusively from members of the Permanent Militia, and it was not until 1897 that this requirement was relaxed in favour of recruitment of civilians.

The Force was responsible to the Minister of Defence until 1896, when responsibility passed to the Minister of Justice. In 1912, a separate offi ce of `Minister in charge of Police' was created, but these three portfolios - Minister of Justice, Minister of Defence and Minister

31


in charge of Police - were consistently held by the same person in every administration until 1935 when, for the fi rst time, the portfolio of Minister in charge of Police was held by a minister who was not also Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence.

The 1886 Act and Regulations and Instructions were modelled largely on the more civilian London Metropolitan Police Act of 1829, rather than the more military Royal Irish Constabulary model. But the fi rst three Commissioners of the Force were military offi cers, and it was not until ten years later that the fi rst Commissioner who came from a police (the London Met) rather than a military background was appointed.

The Regulations and Instructions, however, portrayed the Force as primarily a preventative force, refl ecting the policing principles that Sir Robert Peel and the two fi rst Commissioners had prescribed for the London Metropolitan Police some 60 years earlier. The Force was divided into two `branches' - the `preventive branch', the attention of which was to be `specially directed, in the fi rst instance, to the prevention of crime', and the `detective police', whose attention was to be `principally directed to the detection of crime, and to a special surveillance of the criminal class'.

Despite this, as with all the British colonial models of policing, the New Zealand Police Force retained a quasi-military tradition and ethos well into the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Front line offi cers (all men) were subject to rigid discipline, were housed in barracks, were regularly required to engage in marching and drill, and were not, for instance, permitted to get married without the permission of the Commissioner. Despite the recognition of a measure of `constabulary independence' and individual discretion that every member of the Force supposedly enjoyed, the Force was managed according to an hierarchical `command and control' philosophy, in which obedience to superiors was the most salient precept. Force members were regularly transferred to different locations to avoid them becoming overly `familiar' with those whom they were to police.

Although crime prevention was supposed to be the primary focus of policing, this was not refl ected in the everyday realities of police work, and by the middle of the twentieth century, the principal focus of policing in New Zealand, as in every other country of the Commonwealth, as well as the United States, was reactive law enforcement rather than proactive prevention. This was accomplished through the despatch of offi cers on routine patrol to `occurrences' or `incidents' of which the Force became aware mostly through calls by the public to its central or regional communications and despatch centres. Proactive crime prevention was very much a secondary focus, undertaken when time and resources permitted after response to incidents had been attended to.

The fi rst 120 years of policing in New Zealand following its initial colonisation in 1840 can thus be seen to have involved two roughly equal 60-year periods, refl ecting two quite different philosophies, or fundamental principles, of policing. The fi rst 60 years involved the systematic, militaristic and armed imposition on an often unco-operative and sometimes actively resistant populace (Päkehä as well as Mäori) of a colonial order determined by the ruling Päkehä elite. While that tradition lingered on for some time during the next 60 years, it was gradually superseded by a philosophy of unarmed `policing by consent' in which essentially reactive law enforcement policing was mobilised in response to calls for service from a more or less co-operative and supportive public.

Of course, this is an over-simplifi cation; there were many moments in which more aggressive, proactive and repressive policing approaches were employed in response to

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perceived threats to public order and to suppress public protest. Nevertheless, these were occasional events and do not detract from the general pattern of routine policing that I have described.

Which brings us to the last 40 years or so since the last major revision of police legislation embodied in the Police Act of 1958. The 1958 Act did not introduce any very signifi cant changes to the essential principles that had guided policing in New Zealand for the preceding 50 years or so. Indeed, the major functions of Police, let alone the fundamental principles of policing, were nowhere spelled out in the Act. It modernised provisions concerning internal employment relations and management, but the only change of any signifi cance that indicated any shift in the philosophy of policing was the rather symbolic dropping of the word `Force' from the name of the organisation, which henceforth was to be known simply as the New Zealand Police.

In the intervening years since the 1958 Act was enacted, however, some very signifi cant developments have occurred which have caused police policy-makers and legislators in many countries to rethink the designated role of police, the principles that should govern the policing that they do, and their relationships both to the government and to the communities that they police. It is these developments that provide the basis for the view that the time has now come for a `fi rst principles' re-write of the Act.

Most important of these have undoubtedly been radical changes in attitudes towards the role of the state, and relationships between the state and its citizenry. Specifi cally, from the 1960's onwards, expectations of public involvement in governmental decision- making, and of public accountability for, and transparency of, such decision-making have dramatically changed. The idea that government could be conducted by ruling political and bureaucratic elites without signifi cant consultation of, and accountability to, the public gave way to growing demands for consultation, accountability and transparency. Although they clung to their claim to political `independence' with respect to the application of the law in individual cases, in other respects police were just as vulnerable to such demands as other public servants. The idea, refl ected in Section 7 of the Police Regulations, that police's fi rst duty was owed to the Government increasingly gave way to a conception of `community' or `community-based' policing in which police's fi rst duty and accountability was to be to the communities it policed. Expectations began to develop that citizens and `communities' should have a direct and signifi cant `voice' with respect to police decision-making, policy and priorities, and that policing should be tailored to the particular (and varying) articulated policing `needs' of the various communities they policed.

Governance generally came to be viewed not so much as `rule' imposed by the elected government, but as the co-ordination and provision of public services to meet public demand. Police organisations accordingly came to be thought of as police services rather than as police forces. In the 1980's this trend was further entrenched through the adoption, by the Lange government, of a neo-liberal conception of governance that has come to be known as the new public management, in which, mimicking the private sector, public services are `purchased' by government through audited quasi-contractual agreements entered into with service providers such as the police.

This "new contractualism", as it has come to be referred to (Vincent-Jones, 2006), and the private sector mentalities that inspired it, quite naturally gave rise to the idea of a `market' or `quasi-market' for the provision of public services, in which the public sector would have to compete with potential private sector providers for `market share'. Privatisation and

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`contracting out' of public service provision became an increasingly common feature of government. While Police have been more successful than many other parts of the public service in resisting such trends, they have certainly not been entirely immune from them, and the idea that the provision of policing services should be a monopoly of the public police has increasingly given way to a conception of `plural' policing provision in which the public police are, at the very least, expected to work in partnership with other public, private and voluntary sector providers in the provision of policing services to the communities they serve.

But this was not all. Relaxation of previously highly restrictive immigration policies led to an increasingly diverse, multicultural and multi-ethnic society, in which there was a dilution of the earlier moral consensus with respect to acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and in which toleration of `difference' became a guiding social precept. For police this posed two great challenges: in the fi rst place, they were expected to demonstrate much greater `cultural sensitivity' and responsiveness in doing policing; and in the second place they faced growing demands to recruit their personnel from a broader social pool that would enable the police organisation to `refl ect' the diverse communities that they police. And the `communities' to which such demands related were not just geographical communities, but included `identity' communities such as gay and `lifestyle' communities.

In New Zealand, this emerging multiculturalism was matched by a resurgence of Mäori political activism that included a demand that, in the performance of their duties, the police should take particular account of the special place and historical entitlements of Mäori in New Zealand society. Part of this involved the expectation that in performing their duties the police should recognise and respond to the preference of Mäori for an alternative, `restorative justice' approach to policing that challenged the traditional European approaches of the New Zealand Police.

And in the 1990's, a growing regional consciousness led the government to commit New Zealand Police resources to foreign policing assistance to Pacifi c Island nations in confl ict and post-confl ict situations, in which the protection of human rights, rather than simply effi cient law enforcement, was of paramount concern.

And fi nally, developments in the fi rst decade of the tw