Report on Government Services 2020

Police services are the principal means through which State and Territory governments pursue the achievement of a safe and secure environment for the community. Across jurisdictions, police activity can be grouped into four broad activity areas:

• Community safety – preserving public order and promoting a safer community
• Crime – investigating crime and identifying and apprehending offenders
• Road safety – targeted operations to reduce the incidence of traffic offences and through attendance at, and investigation of, road traffic collisions and incidents

• Judicial services – support to the judicial process including the provision of safe custody for alleged offenders.

Police services also respond to more general needs in the community — for example, working with emergency management organisations and a wide range of government services and community groups, and advising on general policing issues.

Police services are predominantly the responsibility of State and Territory government agencies. They include the ACT community policing function performed by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) under an arrangement between the ACT and the Commonwealth Minister for Justice.

Funding for police services comes almost exclusively from State and Territory governments, with some limited specific purpose Australian Government grants. Nationally in 2018-19, total real recurrent expenditure (including user cost of capital, less revenue from own source and payroll tax) was $12.4 billion (table 6A.1).

Client groups

Broadly, the entire community is a ‘client’ of the police. Some members of the community, who have more direct dealings with the police, can be considered specific client groups, for example:

• victims of crime
• those suspected of, or charged with, committing offences¹
• those reporting criminal incidents
• those involved in traffic-related incidents
• third parties (such as witnesses to crime and people reporting traffic accidents)
• those requiring police services for non-crime-related matters.

Staffing

Police staff may be categorised in two different ways:

• by ‘sworn’ status — sworn police officers exercise police powers, including the power to arrest, summons, caution, detain, fingerprint and search. Specialised activities may be outsourced or undertaken by administrative (unsworn) staff

• by operational status — an operational police staff member is any member (sworn or unsworn) whose primary duty is the delivery of police or police-related services to an external client (where an external client predominately refers to members of the public but may also include law enforcement outputs delivered to other government departments).

Operational status is considered the better estimate for the number of police staff actively engaged in the delivery of police-related services. Nationally in 2018–19, 92.0 per cent of the 75 974 police staff were operational (an increase from 90.5 per cent in 2012-13). This equates to 278 per 100 000 people, but varies across jurisdictions, in part, due to differing operating environments (figure 6.1 and table 6A.2).

Responsiveness

The responsiveness of police to calls for assistance is critical to the effectiveness of police services. Although the Steering Committee considers nationally comparable response times reporting a priority for this Report, currently there is no consistent public reporting of response times across states and territories. NSW, Qld, WA, SA and ACT police publish response times data in annual reports. Other jurisdictions do not report response times as part of their corporate reporting, and have advised they are unable to provide these data for this Report.

• NSW Police report the number of urgent (imminent threat to life or property) response calls and the percentage attended within a target time of 12 minutes. In 2018-19, NSW Police responded to 134 765 urgent response calls, attending 77.3 per cent of urgent duty jobs within the 12 minute target time.

• Queensland Police report the percentage of code 1 and code 2 incidents attended within 12 minutes. Data includes geographic areas covered by the Queensland Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) System. Code 1 and 2 incidents include very urgent matters when danger to human life is imminent and urgent matters involving injury or present threat of injury to person or property. In 2018-19, Queensland Police attended 86.0 per cent of urgent matters within the 12 minute target time.

• WA Police aim to respond to 80 per cent of priority 1 and 2 incidents – situations that require urgent attendance and include an imminent threat to life, serious offence or incident in progress – within 12 minutes in the Perth metropolitan area, and reported 85.2 per cent meeting this target in 2018-19. The target for priority 3 incidents – situations that require routine attendance and include an offence in progress/suspect at scene or the preservation of evidence – is 80 per cent within 60 minutes in the Perth metropolitan area (80.5 per cent achieved in 2018-19).

• SA Police reported that 93.7 per cent of Grade 1 taskings in the metropolitan area were responded to within 15 minutes in 2018-19. The target is 80 per cent or above.

• ACT Police report response time targets for three incident categories:

• Priority One incidents (life threatening or critical situations) are 80 per cent or more of responses within 10 minutes (81.0 per cent achieved in 2018-19)
• Priority Two incidents (situations where the information provided indicates that time is important but not critical) are 80 per cent within 20 minutes (74.5 per cent achieved in 2018-19)
• Priority Three incidents (situations where there is no immediate danger to safety or property but police attendance or response is needed no later than 48 hours from the initial contact by the complainant or a time agreed with the complainant) is 90 per cent within 48 hours (97.5 per cent achieved in 2018-19).

1. The use of the term ‘offender’ in this section refers to a person who is alleged to have committed an offence. It differs from the definition used in section 8 (‘Corrective services’), where the term ‘offender’ refers to a person who has been convicted of an offence and is subject to a correctional sentence. Locate Footnote 1 above

NSW Police 2019, Annual Report 2018‑19 .

Queensland Police Service 2019, Annual Report 2018‑19 .

WA Police 2019, Annual Report 2018‑19 .

SA Police 2019, Annual Report 2018‑19 .

ACT Policing 2019, Annual Report 2018‑19 .