Abstract
This article examines the everyday operation and politics of Indigenous patrols, community-run initiatives with formal agendas that focus on keeping young people safe and preventing contact between young people and the state police. Specifically, it presents fieldwork findings and interview data conducted over three years on various patrols across New South Wales, Australia. In this article, patrols are used as a lens through which to critically examine contemporary issues in the policing of Indigenous Australian communities and as a way of exploring what it means to decolonize the institutions and activities of policing. The research findings demonstrate the complexity of processes of decolonization and raise broader questions concerning how knowledge is produced about Indigenous communities, both by governments and within academia.
In recent years, policing studies have undergone somewhat of a transformation in criminology (Johnston, 1992). Previously, definitions of policing reflected a preoccupation with the activities and functions of the state police (Bittner, 1970; Klockars, 1985). As Waddington (1999 cited by Wakefield and Fleming, 2009: 232) once observed, ‘[t]he simple answer to the question “What is policing?” is that policing is what police officers do’. Increasingly, however, criminologists have drawn attention to the diverse entities that engage in policing activities—private police (Johnston, 1992; Jones and Newburn, 1998; Wakefield, 2003), community patrols (Brogden and Shearing, 1993), community-based crime prevention projects (Crawford, 1997) and other ‘self-conscious’ agencies involved in producing security (Bayley and Shearing, 1996: 586). Within this literature, ‘policing’ is defined broadly as the maintenance of social order and the regulation of behaviour (Reiner, 2000: 1) and connotes much more than the activities of ‘the’ state police (Brodeur, 2010; Jones and Newburn, 2002; O’Malley, 1997; Pasquino, 2006).
However, even this broad definition of ‘policing’ is not as straightforward as it appears. In particular, how can the concept be applied to the practices of those who ‘police’ in these terms, but who reject the label ‘policing’ as applied to their activities? In contexts such as Australia, where the state police are associated with a long history of colonial oppression and racism, Indigenous efforts at producing safety and security thus pose serious questions. If criminologists insist on deploying a concept of policing, does this represent another attempt to override colonized people’s voices, and risk confirming the colonial status of the discipline? How can a study of Indigenous ‘security’ agencies proceed in the face of such problems—methodologically and conceptually—where ‘policing’ is such a deeply embedded category in criminological theory and research?
In pursuit of these and related questions, this article examines the operation and organization of Indigenous patrols in the state of New South Wales. Indigenous patrols are locally run initiatives with formal agendas that focus on keeping young people safe and preventing contact between Indigenous young people and the state police, although in practice they often appear more focused on an array of loosely related issues of social welfare. The core ethos of patrol work includes: connection to the local Indigenous community; independence from state police; and a consensual basis of operations (built on trust, rapport and in some cases cultural authority). They are distinctive from top–down or internal law reform efforts that have sought the recruitment of Indigenous personnel as police officers or in a community liaison capacity within the state police force.
In telling the story of patrols, this article poses a further question linked to those introduced above: what does it mean to decolonize the institutions and activities of ‘policing’? This question, I propose, cannot be answered solely at a theoretical level or with reference to official narratives in Australian policing history, but must consider everyday examples of Indigenous governance, local knowledge and a plurality of Indigenous voices. In turn, it will be argued, this requires a corresponding decolonization of both criminology as a discipline, and of the production of knowledge about Indigenous communities more broadly. Australian criminologists and policymakers have almost completely overlooked the activities of Indigenous peoples themselves. 1 At present, most analyses associated with decolonizing criminal justice focus on formal policy and official efforts to reform the state criminal justice system—restorative justice, circle sentencing, family conferencing, sentencing processes, community liaison officers, police culture and the recruitment of Indigenous police officers. Overwhelmingly, however, these discussions have focused on reforms to, or innovations within, the state criminal justice system.
Supposing instead we approached the issue from the bottom–up, with reference to local knowledge, everyday politics and through the grounded examination of Indigenous governance initiatives? In attempting this exercise, the article takes inspiration from two emerging areas of scholarship. First, the development in the United States of writings on ‘histories from below’ or ‘bottom–up histories’ (Brown-Nagin, 2011; Chafe, 1980; Mack, 2005; Payne, 1995) and second, the emergence of Kaupapa Maori research in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Smith, 1999) and Indigenous methodologies elsewhere (Moreton-Robinson and Walter, 2009).
To this end, this article seeks to document the contribution of Indigenous patrols, which have a rich but under-examined history in Australia; and uncover the agency of ‘bottom–up’ justice initiatives including the quiet achievers involved in their everyday operation—Elders, community members and others.
What are Indigenous patrols?
As noted above, Indigenous patrols are locally run initiatives with formal agendas that focus on maximizing the safety and well-being of Indigenous young people. Patrols operate in a diverse range of urban, rural and remote settings across almost all Australian jurisdictions. 2 Blagg (2008: 107) estimates that by 2008 there were approximately 130 such patrols operating in Australia—with around two-thirds of these being located in rural and remote parts of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. 3 My own fieldwork suggests these figures are conservative.
Owing to the local specificity of patrol services, there is an enormous degree of diversity among the functions, objectives, funding arrangements, composition and style of each unique patrol. So whereas the Yuendumu Women’s Night Patrol (in central Northern Territory) is run by female Warlpiri Elders and developed as part of a drive to get tough on alcohol and family violence issues, the Redfern Streetbeat seeks to minimize contact between the state police and Indigenous young people in urban Sydney. In other communities, patrols have emerged to fill a vacuum in state service delivery. Despite this variation, broad unity can be seen at the level of key functions which in New South Wales include providing transport, maximizing safety, mentoring and attempting to minimize conflict and confrontation between the state police and Indigenous communities (see later).
At least in theory, patrols are connected in some way to the local Indigenous community within which they operate. In practice, they operate with varying levels of community input or involvement from the community (e.g. they might be organized by an Aboriginal corporation, by a men’s group or women’s groups, or they may function with the oversight of the local Aboriginal Community Working Party). Similarly, patrols operate independently of—and not infrequently in some degree of conflict with—the state police. This does not mean that the relations between patrols and the state police are necessarily acrimonious, although this is sometimes the case. Indeed, most patrols in the current study relied on the state police to intervene in instances of violent crime (domestic violence, assault) and many patrols had positive relationships with the state police. In some cases senior police officers were present on the management committees of local patrol initiatives. That said, a key part of the patrols’ agenda is to minimize young people’s contact with the criminal justice system, primarily the state police.
Patrols are independent of state and federal government, though in practice most rely on a combination of one-off and ongoing grants from multiple sources. Currently the chief sources of funding for patrols in New South Wales (NSW) are: the NSW Department of Justice and Attorney General; the Commonwealth Attorney General; the Department of Community Services; the NSW Police Force; the NSW Department of Health; Aboriginal corporations; local government councils; and local businesses. As this suggests, patrols rarely rely on one source of funding and typically receive funding through a combination of one-off grants and in-kind support (reimbursements for petrol, the loaning of a van). 4 On a practical level, this means that for patrol staff, a great deal of time is spent applying for competitive grants and fulfilling the administrative requirements of existing contracts. This itself raises issues about the precarious nature of patrol operations and their longevity.
Reflecting the fact that patrols occupy this position at the margins of mainstream society, they have tended largely to escape the attention of criminologists and socio-legal scholars. 5 Very little is known about patrols. In particular, little is known about exactly how many there are, how many of these are operating at a ‘functional’ level (in a broad sense) or for how long such initiatives have been in operation.
The study
A more detailed account of the research methodology adopted for this study can be found in Porter (2014), however, I highlight here the methodological essentials. First, an important element of this project involved consultation with participants regarding research design input. This involved speaking with various community controlled organizations as a first port of call which, depending on the locale, included: the local Aboriginal Working Parties; Elders Groups; the local Aboriginal Land Councils; and local Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organizations. When meeting people I emphasized the voluntary nature of the project and made a general invitation for individuals to participate in it as much or as little as they wanted to, assuming they wanted to at all. I did not go to the various sites with a preordained vision of the research methods, rather the first step involved meeting with the patrol management and asking whether they wished to take part in the study and, if so, what research output would be beneficial. In addition to community input into research design, a second and related element involved the importance of self-awareness and the corresponding need to admit my various mistakes and the continuous process of seeking feedback on research processes. This included an awareness of the perception of the ‘seagull’ 6 or ‘fly-in fly-out’ syndrome associated with researchers and bureaucrats working with Indigenous communities and the corresponding obligations of reciprocity. Examples of non-conventional ‘research’ outputs from this project include: community reports; presentation of findings at local Community Working Parties; assistance with the community’s grant writing; documentation of oral testimonies; compilation of archival resources; and writing up of local history. Importantly, these obligations are of an ongoing nature and constitute one of the most important aspects of this research project (see Christensen et al., 2015).
Three primary case studies were carried out in Redfern/Waterloo (inner-city areas of Sydney, NSW), Bourke (a small town in far-western NSW) and Dubbo (a provincial city in mid-western NSW). In terms of research methods the study consisted of: field observations (sitting in on patrol operations during operation hours and observing the patrol activities and interactions); interviews (83 were recorded and some were not recorded); informal discussions (including individual and group discussions); and group meetings. It was supplemented by archival searches of documents, reports, photos and related materials. The study has been informed by original fieldwork conducted on several other sites in NSW. 7
The purpose of this empirical study was to gain insights into the operation of patrols on the ground. This includes examining the nature of their everyday operations (at service and managerial levels), the nature of relations between the patrol and various entities (clients, the Indigenous community, the non-Indigenous community, the local state police, funding bodies and so on). It was also concerned with examining how patrols have been perceived—not only by the local patrol workers and members of the local community—but by the broader non-Indigenous community, the state police and others. This was not intended to provide an evaluation of the patrols or consider whether or not according to some fixed performance criteria they ‘work’. Rather, my central concern was with the mundane details—their everyday operations, the relations among workers, between clients and the state police—in order to demonstrate the variety and complexity of alternative governance structures in their local context. In doing so, a related aim of this research was to document the oral testimonies of those involved in the everyday operation of patrols and to paint a more in-depth picture of their everyday operation of patrols.
The following section presents an in-depth analysis of the everyday operation and politics of patrols, with reference to both my observations and discussions with research participants.
The everyday operation and politics of patrols
Transportation
One of the most visible functions performed by patrols across the three sites involved transporting young people from public places to a home or another safe place. Patrolling involves driving around the streets looking out for young people ‘at risk’—being ‘the eyes and ears of the community’ as one worker put it. This could be ‘at risk’ of homelessness, of being arrested, of being caught breaking ‘curfew’,
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of offending, of becoming a victim of crime or of otherwise coming into contact with the state police. In a national review of Indigenous night patrols in Australia, Blagg and Valuri (2004: 205) describe patrols as providing ‘a safe transportation service to a place of safety for those at risk’. Further research by Blagg (2008) details how the majority of patrols (then) in operation transport youth from one area to another using a vehicle or by foot. These statements are largely consistent with my observations. Typically, patrols would have a driver and an ‘off-sider’ or ‘spotter’, whose role was to locate young people who were out in public, either alone or in large groups which would attract the attention of the state police or otherwise at risk of homelessness. While this function might seem relatively straightforward, in practice, locating a home or another safe place for the client group was at times challenging. A large proportion of the client group were either homeless or at risk of homelessness and it was common to drive around to several houses before finding a suitable place for a young person to stay the night. However it was often said that the transportation function was poorly understood by non-Indigenous residents and outsiders. Patrol workers were at pains to emphasize during interviews that their role extended beyond ‘offering a lift home’ or ‘providing a taxi service’ to managing homelessness and other social issues: And it came from the Aboriginal community, I think that’s the best thing about the night patrol. It wasn’t something that non-Aboriginal people valued, it was seen just to be a taxi service. Whereas with Aboriginal people transport is a huge issue for us for our community and our young ones. So it bridged that gap but it also allowed for those partnerships with young people to develop in a relaxed atmosphere as well. We also, with the night patrol, were really careful about where we’d place children: so if they gave us an address and we went there and there was lots of alcohol, then we’d look for other family members—so it wasn’t like a taxi service where it goes from one place to another we actually had that community consultation and knowledge that facilitated that to happen. Sometimes home is a pretty bad place: a lot of alcohol, no food, sometimes violence between mum and dad. So often they are out and about with their mates because they are safer out with their mates than being at home. […] That’s also behind a lot of breaches of bail. There are large numbers of breach of bail relative to other places. Kids don’t want to be at home, there is nothing there for them and they are safer with their mates roaming the streets. You know, we struck different issues while doing that [patrolling the streets] but it was good because it really opened our eyes up to what um, what underlying issues there were. Um, so there were a lot of um sort of a lot of home problems, a lot of problems we found with children working the streets were from home and the set up and the dynamics of the house and how it was running and stuff like that.
Through patrolling the streets at night and by being present at night, patrol workers were simultaneously attempting to improve feelings of safety among young people and in the community. Indeed, in many ways the patrol workers’ role extended beyond mere transportation to playing a more active interpersonal role.
Mentoring and building relationships
In addition to transportation, patrols fulfil a mentoring function which is effectuated through patrol workers acting as positive role models for young people and taking an interest in the well-being of their ‘regulars’. The overwhelming perception of patrol workers was that anti-social behaviour including ‘acting out’ is natural and, to a certain degree, inevitable. For these workers, the most productive response is to address the underlying issues by providing positive role models or mentors from within the community. On most site locations the patrol service clientele consisted of a majority of ‘regulars’ and a minority of new clients. The nature of the mentoring relationship that developed depended to a large degree on the personality of the individuals involved, with some patrol workers adopting more direct or overt mentoring techniques than others: I won’t drink [in the local bar] here. I go back home with my mates and I drink there, and I’ll have one night on it and that’s it. But I won’t drink in front of the kids out here, I lie to them I say ‘yeah I don’t drink’. I have kids they say ‘I’d love you to be my godfather’. I’ve had six kids ask whether they can come live with me. Always got kids asking to come to tea with them. I used to say things like ‘it’s about time you got yourself together’ or ‘you need to wake up to yourself, boy’. And the young kids would be like: [indifferently] ‘yeah Unc
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, sure thing Unc’.
The mentoring role was also performed in more covert and subtle ways. This might involve conversations with regulars about their dreams and aspirations—a common practice across all three patrols—or having patrol workers send out a subtle message about alcohol or drug misuse in a relaxed or casual setting. As one patrol worker put it, I can’t stop them drinking, I can preach to them but I don’t wanna preach to them too much or I’ll turn them off. But they’ll be talking to me and I’ll just say subtle things like you know you don’t have to have a beer to have a good time.
The mentoring aspects of patrol work have not featured within the academic or policy literature on patrols. One possible reason for this might be that on first sight, activities akin to mentoring might seem inconsequential or of secondary importance to other more visible and immediate activities such as, say, removing young people from public spaces or preventing contact with the state police. The mentoring function may thus pass unnoticed by evaluators or researchers. Yet mentoring, certainly in the view of the patrol workers, constitutes an integral part of patrol activities and the building of mentor-like relationships with the client represents an important long-term goal.
Care-taking
The third function was a caring role, which involved ‘looking out for kids in trouble’ or ‘simply by being there and showing we care’. Patrol workers emphasized the social, health and welfare functions performed by patrols as promoting the safety and well-being of the young people. The caring role could take various forms. It might involve taking care and looking out for the client group and making efforts to provide a safe place for at risk young people late at night. Most obviously, this function could be seen as being performed merely by patrollers being present at night and showing that they cared: Our priority is to be approachable and to give a toss about them if they need someone, as a lot of them don’t [have someone who cares about them]. So our goal is to take them off the street, but also many don’t have an adult influence in their life and who shows someone cares and gives them somewhere safe to hang out. A lot of kids are left at home alone, a lot of their parents let them drink, or mum and dad will be off at the pub so it doesn’t matter. […] It doesn’t matter necessarily if at home alone as this too might be an unsafe place […] if the person is hanging around the wrong crowd. We pick up young girls ‘blind as bats’,
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the boys are just as bad. […] It’s like that sense of deed, like they need to feel wanted and like someone cares and that there are people who give a rat’s toss about them. And the kids could see that: they’re out at 2 o’clock in the bloody morning, looking after us. And it was that there were people who cared, out there in rain sometimes to get these kids home safe. As far as I’m concerned it’s an integral part of the community, for me those kids could have ended up dead or career criminals or stuff like that. And I think it shows them that there were people that cared, that cared about who they were and what they were doing, and who cared enough to try and take them off the street.
Typically the caring role is performed through engaging in conversations with the client group about their issues and, where appropriate, discussing available services (counselling services, youth services or other support services). Patrol workers raise concerns, take an interest in the happenings of the client group (e.g. his or her familial, social or legal situation) show interest in or raise awareness of a situation faced by a friend or relative of the young person (e.g. a mutual friend, sibling or member of his or her extended family). More experienced patrol workers would regularly engage in conversations with regulars, where appropriate, about the out-of-character behaviour of fellow service users.
Information-sharing
An extension of the caring function included what may be described as an information-sharing role. This consisted of monitoring the well-being of the client group over a period of time and, where appropriate, linking up young people with appropriate services (mental health care, health care, counselling services, Department of Community Services, doctors, outreach staff and so on). One of the core aspects of patrol work is to provide information and referrals to young people who are neglected by mainstream services. In the words of patrol workers, providing a ‘safety net’ for young people who ‘fall through the cracks of the system’. A large proportion of the patrol client group are in and out of juvenile justice centres, school systems and borderline support units.
Specifically, the information-sharing function involves: observing the whereabouts and well-being of the client group on an everyday basis; informally gathering information about the home situation of members of the client group; raising issues of concern among patrol staff; and (where appropriate) making referrals on behalf of young people to a third agency. Sharing of information occurred at two levels, communication between patrol staff and communication between patrol staff and other third parties. Communication among staff presented the opportunity to share information and monitor the well-being of the client group. All three patrols—the subject of case studies—maintained regular meetings among patrol drivers as a matter of regular practice. The practice of ‘handover’ was often discreet and would occur in confidence either at the end of a shift or mid-week during office hours. ‘Handover’ provided a means for patrol workers to raise awareness about current popular hangout spots, homelessness, substance abuse and to ensure consistency in policies and approach. This might include if a young person had been temporarily banned from using a service: Communication was a big thing between both [co-worker], myself, the volunteers and the young people. And on the Wednesday after [co-worker’s] shift we’d get together and de-brief, in terms of who was on and who was off. I’d say hang on you’ve been banned.
In addition to sharing information among themselves, occasionally patrol workers would make referrals to a third party agency in an effort to connect young people with appropriate services. Some patrols had developed initiatives as an adjunct to their own work and/or developed partnerships with other relevant agencies. Another important aspect of communication between the patrols and third parties involved ‘follow up’ which involved ensuring that the client felt comfortable enough to actually attend a meeting with a service provider. As one patrol worker put it, simply referring a client to a particular service is rarely enough: then I’d go around and see those families and I’d say, I spoke with Aunty such and such on the bus last night, she gave you a little pamphlet about sexual health or whatever. Why don’t you come to the centre? So I followed up and made sure we connected with those people.
However this aspect of the information-sharing role was not a universal practice, with some patrols opting for a more ‘hands off’ approach. For example, both the Grafton StreetCruize and Newcastle Waringa Bus would hand out packages with a variety of food vouchers, information leaflets and cards for local services. Patrol workers on these sites saw this as a way of raising awareness of local services without becoming or feeling intrusive.
Finally, in performing the above functions—transportation, mentoring, care-taking and information-sharing—patrol workers drew on their local knowledge about networks, family relationships and community dynamics. Unlike state police interventions, patrol workers do not possess the legal authority to coerce young people to follow instructions. This was apparent from the very first night I went out on patrol, for example: Joe [pseudonym, patrol worker] pulls over at the local community centre and explains that a lot of the young people here are regulars of the service. He points to a young boy in a red shirt. ‘See that boy there, he has been marked for the Broncos.
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He’s from a strict family, a good family, they go on annual holidays. Their parents are both non-substance users, family-oriented—not just the parents but the grandparents and aunties and uncles—they all have their bearings—and that puts them in good stead to be out here and to be trusted.’ He points to a younger boy to the right in a hoody: ‘See that boy over there—that’s his brother, also a real good kid, great at school and sport.’ He points to group of three fairer skinned young people, two boys and one girl. ‘Now see these three lot, they lost their father to cancer in 2008. In a sense their family is semi-functional, they are very good mates with everyone here. They [the parents] do their best.’ This is where the volunteers [patrol workers] need to be vigilant.
This was also apparent from conversations with patrol workers: The thing is, being local I knew every kid personally, and I knew every family personally. I knew every household and […] I did know some of the dynamics within each household and how they worked. So yeah, there were instances where I had to, pretty much sit down and have a chat with the parents about, what are the procedures with caring for the child after dark and stuff like that, and you know. […] Growing up here, I’ve been here all my life and I know everyone. Raised here, worked here since I finished school. I was happy to be part of the CAP [Community Assistance Patrol] program.
Policing?
During interviews patrol workers emphasized their role as encompassing something other than ‘order maintenance’, let alone law enforcement: acting as mentors, care-takers, social workers, health workers, simply being there for those young people who fell through the cracks of mainstream services (education, corrective services, community services). In doing all this, the concern of patrol workers was to maximize the safety and well-being of young people. Reflecting on the above description of everyday patrol operations, can we call this ‘policing’?
At least in some ways the work of patrols can be seen in a ‘policing’ light—they patrol local communities (usually by bus but sometimes by foot), act as ‘the eyes and ears of the community’ and are concerned with controlling some aspects of social behaviour. They attempt to produce ‘security’ in the sense that they attempt to improve feelings of safety and to counter the negative impacts of the criminal justice system for Indigenous young people. In this way they manage relations between the state police and the community. Current writing in the policing literature posits that the activities of community patrols, private police and other informal initiatives might be considered ‘policing’ activities where such initiatives exhibit these defining characteristics of ‘visible agency’ and are concerned with ‘crime control’ and the maintenance of ‘social order’ (Bayley and Shearing, 1996; Reiner, 2000).
Interestingly, policing was not a word that came up—at least unprompted—during interviews. Indeed, when I asked patrol workers whether they saw their work as constituting ‘policing’, a number emphatically said that they did not. Common statements included: ‘It’s not policing’, ‘we’re not the police’ and ‘it’s a different philosophy’. The following quotes are fairly representative: No, it’s not policing […] because we’re not there to arrest young people—and look, if it was policing we’d be able to swarm into the park and say, ‘right you put that grog down—and you and you get in the car’ but we can’t. We’re not there to put constraints on [people], and there’s no way we can […] we don’t have guns or pepper spray, we’re not even allowed to coerce young people on to the bus, and you know, this has been difficult when you find a six-year-old at 1 o’clock at the morning. I think part of the beauty of it was that it wasn’t there as another function for the police […] You know, it really operated from and along the correct protocols for the Aboriginal community. It was about seeing people and going, ‘get in we’re taking you home’ or ‘we’re taking you to Aunt’s place’. And it wasn’t about keeping statistics and writing it down. And like I said before it was a real sense of pride. We weren’t there to do the police person’s job, but to keep young people safe. This was important: if they [the regulars] knew we had affiliation with the police, they would have nothing to do with us.
In short, ‘policing’ was understood as being synonymous with the activities of the state police or acting in support of them. The ‘P word’—as one research participant put it—has such negative connotations in Indigenous communities that even the perception of collaboration with the state police could result in a lack of trust among the client group. The perceived independence from and lack of affiliation with the state police was a necessary prerequisite to enable relationships built on trust to develop. Arguably (and some workers explicitly made this point) it was what made their work possible.
The perception of ‘policing’ as a dirty word is testament to the legacy of colonial and neo-colonial policing of Indigenous communities. It also underlines the very real challenges in attempts to reconcile relations between Indigenous communities and the state police. Conflict with the police is not simply historical 12 but is borne out in contemporary practices of over-policing, harassment, intimidation, assumed criminality, over-surveillance and deaths in custody (Cunneen, 2001; HREOC, 1991; Johnston, 1991). Though geographically distant and socially distinct, all three communities shared a strong (state) police presence concentrated in geographical areas where the patrols also operated. Thus if the Redfern Streetbeat were to pull up or drop a young person off on ‘Telopea Lane’ or ‘Morehead Road’, for instance, a state police van would not be far away. In some areas residents spoke sarcastically about how police ‘practically live there’, ‘have a common room there’ or that you would ‘never need to call the gungies 13 because they come by every 15 minutes anyway’. Part and parcel of over-policing is the perception among youth of being ‘hassled’ or ‘singled out’ by the state police. The police practice of stopping and searching 14 young people, and of Indigenous young people in particular, was commonly observed across all three sites. Other regular police practices included the over-policing of bail-related offences (breach of curfew), public order offences and trifecta ‘crimes’—offensive language, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. There was a general perception (shared by some patrol workers) that the state police view Indigenous young people as ‘offenders’, ‘criminals’ and ‘troublemakers’. This finding is borne out by statistics research suggesting racist attitudes persist in the daily practices of some police officers and that an entrenched or systemic racism exists within Australian police institutions generally (AHRC, 1997; ALRC, 1992; Johnston, 1991). This finding also resonates with recent psychological studies on implicit bias, racial profiling and ‘race-crime association’ (Eberhardt and Rattan, 2010; Eberhardt et al., 2004), which demonstrate the insidious and automatic nature of stereotypical associations between ‘race’ and ‘crime’, even among individuals who consciously harbour non-prejudiced attitudes. Finally, there was a perception of racist practices among a small minority of police officers who were simply ‘bad cops’. Young people would frequently talk about their negative encounters with these cops on patrol, with many being able to list the ‘dirty cops’ by name. A common discussion on patrol was to share stories about their negative altercations with certain of these notorious police officers. Equally, positive references were made to some individual police officers (similarly singled out by name) who embraced friendly relations with young people and the local patrol, including for example those who actively participate in community/police programmes.
Counter-policing?
Perhaps one way to deal with these dilemmas in using the ‘policing’ label could be to use the term ‘counter-policing’—a term that is deliberately ambiguous with respect to policing per se. The work of patrols could be seen to be ‘counter-policing’ in the sense that by shepherding young people away from police ‘hotspots’, patrol workers sought to minimize confrontation between Indigenous youth and the state police. This is especially important in light of the issues of over-policing generally, and of trifecta ‘crimes’ in particular. Sometimes patrols did oppose police interventions and advocated on the behalf of regulars using the service. Through fulfilling such a role, patrol workers may be seen to be maintaining an oppositional order and thereby performing a policing activity of some kind. A clear illustration was the patrol workers’ approach on most sites to young people on curfew. Although non-compliance with bail conditions is an arrestable offence under section 50 of the Bail Act 1978 (NSW), patrols commonly approached these situations by escorting the young person home and thus avoiding unnecessary contact with the police.
However there are some problems that arise even with this characterization. First, it overstates the oppositional status of patrols, which rely on and in certain circumstances seek to build bridges with the state police. Second, it fails to acknowledge the totality of functions performed by patrols, which are more than merely reactionary to the state police intervention but extend to proactively seeking to maximize youth safety in the broad sense of the term (health, shelter, well-being). Finally and most importantly, it risks silencing the voices of patrol workers and Indigenous community members, including both those who rejected the view of their work as policing and those who characterized their work in broader terms, above and beyond minimizing contact with the state police.
The daily operations of patrols might also be contrasted to other categories, such as social work or crime prevention. The work of patrols could be seen to be ‘social work’ in the sense that patrol workers were concerned with finding a safe place for young people to stay and linking up young people with mainstream services. Similarly, patrol work could be seen to be ‘crime prevention’ by removing young people from criminogenic situations, which undoubtedly play a role in reducing the occurrence of crime in the local area. Insofar as their activities resemble or overlap with crime prevention or social work functions, this is overwhelmingly because this is a tactic subordinate to the task of improving the safety and well-being of Indigenous young people. Yet crime prevention, like social work, was rarely a goal in itself. The activities of patrols hence extend beyond policing, social work and crime prevention—patrol workers act as a mentor and care-taker for youth, they monitor ‘at risk’ youth and attempt to minimize harm. While these aspects of ‘police’ work has been discussed in the traditional literature on policing (Cumming et al., 1964), it has rarely been applied to Indigenous peoples, partly a legacy of the colonial foundations of the police force in Australian history, and partly because of ongoing contestation in the policing of contemporary Indigenous communities.
Perhaps then the term ‘policing’—even in the broadest and most critical sense of the term—may be a product of and remain limited to the confines of ‘western’ criminology. Insofar as patrol workers in NSW are concerned, reducing the activities of patrols in NSW to the term ‘policing’ or even ‘counter-policing’ would sell their work short. The continued use of these terms in academic discourse only distances such discourse from the reality of activities undertaken on the ground and the perspectives of (largely) Indigenous workers.
Indigenous communities and the politics of knowledge production
The discussion of ‘policing’ and ‘counter-policing’ underscores the importance of grounding analyses with reference to localized Indigenous justice practices. This requires seeking out the perspectives of those who are involved in everyday Indigenous governance at a local community level, and in the context of this study, three points emerge.
First, the inclusion of local voices and the writing of ‘histories from below’ bring to the fore issues and perspectives that are lost in grand narrative accounts. It is clear that from the workers’ perspective their operations are largely shaped by attempts to work within local Indigenous understandings, relationships and sensitivities. This brings them often into strained relations with government agencies and police, both of whom have an understanding that patrols should perform something akin to a policing or crime prevention role. Consequently, as patrol workers stated in so many words, the idea of a ‘decolonized police force’ may be more an oxymoron than an ideal objective for future reform.
As Brogden and Shearing (1993) argue in Policing for a New South Africa, the ‘answers’ to policing problems in post-apartheid South Africa do not necessarily lie in improving the criminal justice system but may require a radical change, including in improving socio-economic opportunities, social welfare and community empowerment. A ‘decolonized police’ then, might involve something other than the state police as an institution. In a sense there is nothing new or surprising with this finding, which recalls earlier policing scholarship regarding the need for reform efforts to take a broad approach and look to ‘nurturing alternative forms of policing’ rather than simply improving the state police (Bayley and Shearing, 1996). By analogy, the decolonization of ‘policing’ as an activity might involve something that is not nor even should be understood as policing, but other activities aimed at the safety and care of policing subjects. Such an idea opens up new ways of thinking about decolonizing the activities of policing as well as new possibilities for reform in criminal justice to address Indigenous issues. In particular, it highlights how reform efforts may need to look beyond the square of state police and the criminal justice system and towards nurturing local governance initiatives that may not resemble ‘policing’ from a western gaze.
Second, a clear message from the findings of this research is that a priority for reformers is to think of new ways of nurturing and working with local Indigenous governance initiatives in whatever form—be they a community patrol, a local Aboriginal Community Working Party, a men’s group, a community-run women’s service, a language revitalization service. This includes being open to the idea that what ‘policing’, ‘governance’ or ‘justice’ look like on the ground may appear very different from their non-Indigenous conventional equivalents. Importantly, law and policy reform in this area must balance the need to nurture local governance initiatives in a way that both works within and respects the protocols, pre-existing governance structures and autonomy of the local Indigenous nation. For government bodies and law reform agencies, a priority must be the development of new ways of working together with Indigenous nations so that ‘bottom–up’ governance initiatives can be nurtured and developed, rather than the administration of ‘top–down’ programmes that ignore local agency and existing governance initiatives at a local community level.
Research participants in this study articulated their concerns about ‘autonomy’ and ‘self-determination’ primarily at the local community or Indigenous nation level. Not only was this the community to which they sheeted home the patrols’ legitimacy, but they were frequently resistant to the idea that ‘solutions’ developed elsewhere—whether or not ‘Indigenous’ in design or origin—could simply be imported or imposed on their setting. The almost universal view was that it is to local conditions that actions should be addressed, to the local community members that a duty is owed and from which legitimacy arises (and thus to which the viability of patrols can be traced). Attending to local community relations should not, therefore, be dismissed as merely isolated, anecdotal or—in the pejorative use of the term—‘merely local’. The often-heard claim that ‘Redfern is not Bourke’, as voiced explicitly by research participants, reflects a sense that imposing general solutions is disrespectful to local Indigenous autonomy, to pre-existing local processes and to the community members in specific locales more generally. More than being disrespectful, the imposition of general solutions or pan-Indigenous programmes—without meaningful collaboration with the local Indigenous community—may have a recolonizing effect.
Such decisions concerning Indigenous initiatives may not be unanimously accepted in the community concerned: while some may perceive particular decisions as not ‘selling out’, others may disagree strongly. Unfortunately, in the same way that local knowledge tends to be dismissed as unreliable, subjective or irrational, so too do outsiders have difficulty processing the concept of conflict within Indigenous communities (Wynne, 1996). Research participants were quick to identify the double standard of unanimity expected of local Indigenous governance structures. Such standards are applied to Indigenous politics that would not be expected of most white politics where debate, in contrast, is unremarkably vigorous, robust and viewed as part and parcel of a healthy democracy. When analysis ‘descends’ to the local area, some of the convenient certainties that may appear in the debates over ‘autonomy’ and ‘Indigenization’ are thus disturbed.
Third, the research findings raise questions about the place of Indigenous justice issues within criminology as a discipline. Australian criminologists and policymakers have almost completely ignored or overlooked the activities of Indigenous peoples themselves. 15 In this way, albeit unintentionally, there is a prolongation of an essentially colonial mentality that regards justice ‘solutions’ as originating outside of the colonized people themselves. However, if this mentality is abandoned, criminologists may have to face the possibility that the very concepts with which they work—such as ‘policing’—are rendered problematic. There is growing recognition of the Eurocentric focus in criminological studies and the importance of moving towards a post-colonial criminology (Blagg, 2011; Cunneen, 2011; Tauri and Deckert, 2014). The emergence of Indigenous methodologies—involving the incorporation of Indigenous standpoints, perspectives, methodologies, vocabularies and priorities in a way that is more cognizant of the standpoint of the researcher—is both timely and important in this regard. To date, a reflexive and engaged integration of Indigenous methodologies in criminology remains in its infancy (Cunneen and Rowe, 2014; Milward, 2012).
Conclusion
Unlike other studies of ‘decolonized’ policing which have still focused on reform of the state criminal justice system, this study explicitly took a localized ‘bottom–up’ approach. This leads to the conclusion that the labels of much current research either mis-describe or under-describe the diverse activities undertaken by patrols. This research underscores the importance of grounding analyses with reference to Indigenous self-governance practices and local perspectives in order to begin to decolonize knowledge about Indigenous communities. The decolonization of criminology requires criminologists to be vigilant in their use of sources on Indigenous issues and to reflect on the ways in which research processes and biases within the discipline may be replicating the colonial gaze and colonial processes of knowledge control. At the very least, they are challenged by Indigenous people involved in developing alternative approaches—such as Indigenous patrols—to questions of order and justice. This raises questions about the adequacy or appropriateness of the disciplines’ conceptual apparatus for understanding developments in such contexts, but it also raises problems with respect to judgements and contributions that criminologists may make. With respect to the issue of the decolonization of policing, this article has demonstrated the importance of extending discussions to developments of local governance initiatives, to understanding local histories and listening to the voices of community members.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.