Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Since 1853, allegations of corruption, misconduct and misbehaviour have dogged police in Victoria, Australia. Using Smith’s ‘police complaint reform cycles’ (PCRC) this work identifies and traces what we term ‘discursive distortions’ in official inquiry, highlighting links between processes of official review and the cyclical nature of police malfeasance. We aim to show how the use of language in public reports issued by formal inquiries can work to hinder meaningful reform. Using a recent Victorian inquiry into police oversight, this work critically examines how various stakeholders’ submissions are rendered in the report. This paper argues that the report fails to be objective and gives an insufficient account of community submissions in reaching its conclusions. We demonstrate the mechanisms through which the views and experiences of subject matter experts and community lawyers are routinely ignored and obscured. We show how official inquiries into policing can reflect little or no meaningful engagement with independent stakeholder views and prioritise the status quo. We suggest that this is a reason why official inquiry into policing in Victoria has offered no impactful remedies to entrenched problems and might be best regrded as examples of ‘smoke and mirrors’ that have provided a mere veneer of possible meaningful responses.
Authors: Michael Cain, Emma Ryan
Institution: Deakin University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411192193