The People's Force by Robert Haldane

Author:Robert Haldane [Haldane, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522862300
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

1984

1984 is upon us, but there is no sign of George Orwell’s totalitarian state—no Big Brother, no Thought Police. On the police front, it seems much the same as any other year.45

The bureaucratised and repressive world feared by Orwell had not come to Victoria, but in changed times Victorian people were troubled by criminals. During 1983 more than 200 000 major crimes were reported in the state, prompting the chief commissioner to warn at the beginning of 1984, ‘our freedom will not be assailed by the spectre of totalitarian tyranny, but all of us will be confronted by the very real threat of victimisation by increasing crime’. And this was in spite of the police force in the 1980s having embarked on a number of community policing initiatives and being regarded as the national model in that field. The force formed Community Policing Squads ‘to prevent crime by marshalling communal resources’ and concentrating upon situations involving juvenile offenders, children at risk, family counselling, community education and crime prevention programmes. Community Involvement Groups were established at Frankston and Broadmeadows ‘to examine and assess areas of social dysfunction in the community and to initiate courses of police action aimed at remedying the underlying problems’. The groups developed close contact with community social agencies, schools, church groups, service clubs and businesses, resulting in an improved understanding measurable, in some areas, by a reduction in crime and misbehaviour.

Yet another police–community initiative spawned during this period with the active support of Mick Miller was the Victims of Crime Assistance League (VOCAL). The study of victimology was in a nascent phase internationally and VOCAL was formed following a meeting of 250 interested citizens, including victims of crime, at police headquarters in Melbourne on 13 August 1980. The genesis of VOCAL was a shared sentiment that ‘society’s focus had been upon rehabilitating and improving the lot of offenders for so long that crime victims had become doubly compromised: firstly by the crime itself and secondly by the neglect and apathy of the State towards the victim’.

Registered as an incorporated volunteer organisation, VOCAL was successful both as a lobby group on behalf of victims and as a counselling and referral agency. Buoyed by ongoing support from the force, it expanded quickly and with a combined membership of one thousand, it operated in twelve regions across the state. Despite the lead shown by former Common-wealth Police Commissioner Ray Whitrod and Miller, many police and others working within the criminal justice system failed to fully embrace the urgent need to support victims of crime. Australian victims were still ‘the low men on the totem pole’ and, according to Whitrod, ‘In general they were unorganised, uncertain about their rights, uninformed about the criminal justice system, and ignorant of the ways to attract public attention to their plight’. The principal exceptions to this scenario were the spontaneous acts of victims themselves, almost all of them women, who, confronted by an onslaught of family and domestic violence, moved to establish women’s shelters and rape crisis centres.

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