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Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau
Promoting Harmonious Police/Multicultural Community Relations in Australasia |
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Multicultural Liaison OfficersContents
IntroductionPartnership policing is the underlying philosophy of modern day policing. Liaison and positive interaction with the community are essential for achieving the ideal of the community and police working together. Australia is a multicultural society where the presence of a myriad of cultures, languages and religion pose special challenges for police services wishing to ensure that multicultural communities are included in partnership policing strategies and initiatives. Over the years police services in Australia have developed and implemented a wide range of strategies underpinning the endeavours to address the police management of cultural diversity. Multicultural community liaison is a strategy for cementing harmonious relations with ethnic communities. As such it is a vital ingredient for pursuing the goal of forging a partnership with almost 25 percent of Australia's overseas born population. While multicultural liaison has been an integral part of police strategies since the early 1980's, programs involving designated police (sworn and unsworn) personnel are a relatively recent phenomenon which was first introduced by the NSW Police Service in 1987. Gradually, most of the police jurisdictions in Australia have developed similar programs to suit their individual jurisdictional needs. Although all of the programs adopted pursue the same aim, they vary, often significantly, in administrative structure and even in their names. For example, the term adopted by the New South Wales Police Service for its liaison officers is "Ethnic Community Liaison Officers" whilst other jurisdictions adopted the terms "Multicultural Liaison Officers" and "Community Liaison Officers" such as Victoria Police and Queensland Police Service respectively. The existence of multicultural liaison programs, their strategic significance in terms of police management of cultural diversity and their non-uniform administrative arrangements across jurisdictions, provided an impetus for the Australasian Police Multicultural Advisory Bureau (APMAB) to organise a national Workshop for personnel involved in implementing multicultural liaison strategies at a grass roots level. Police-Community Liaison Officer Programs have been in existence in every State and Territory police jurisdiction of Australia and New Zealand since the 1980s and 1990s. New South Wales was the first police jurisdiction to initiate a pilot program as a result of a Ministerial directive in 1987. This was, however, pre-dated by the establishment of the first Multicultural Advisory Unit by VICPOL in 1983. In response to the changing demographics and socio-political environments in their own States and Territories, each police jurisdiction set up various models of the police-community liaison officer program. Despite the diversity in the structure of PCLO programs, the fundamental philosophy behind them is common: to respond more effectively, as policing organizations, to the ever-changing policing context, and the service-delivery needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities. The common objectives of the Liaison Officer Program are:
In order to achieve these objectives, each PCLO program employs a range of strategies. These strategies are supported by a variety of structures and located within the broader organisational and political contexts in each State and Territory. While the PCLO role is generally aligned with crime prevention, there is considerable focus on advocacy, both on behalf of police and community stakeholders, risk management and police-community education. Their challenge and success lies in establishing, in the long term, strong links between communities and local police for the purpose of crime reduction and crime prevention. PCLOs work at the local, regional and State level, through centralised as well as decentralised structures. In some jurisdictions PCLOs are civilian officers while in others they are sworn police officers. With strong community networks, PCLOs are often viewed as the public face of police organizations within local communities of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While in the majority of jurisdictions, separate programs exist to address the policing issues for culturally and linguistically diverse communities and indigenous communities, Queensland, South Australia and New Zealand have a combined program. In Queensland and New Zealand, the programs began primarily in response to indigenous issues, gradually expanding to meet the needs of the changing demographics. Police jurisdictions have recognised the benefit of ensuring police officers and police personnel are representative of the community they serve. To this end, recruitment programs and initiatives have focused strongly on attracting and recruiting people from culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse background. To take this a step further, most Police Services in Australia have specially appointed officers to work specifically with multicultural and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In most instances, these officers are referred to as Multicultural Liaison Officers. These officers provide a vital service and have a wide range of responsibilities which including:
Please refer to the report on the inaugural workshop for MLOs which was conducted in Sydney on March 6 & 7, 2003. Police-community liaison officer programs in Australia and New Zealand
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