Police Resource Allocation

Relativities recently undertaken by the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC), one area which attracted a considerable amount of discussion was the perceived effects of "urbanisation" on both the higher usage and the higher costs of the provision of law and order services in urban areas. The Commission had recognised certain supposed effects of population concentration and urban size on police workloads, the workload of courts and on higher crime rates in the 1988 Review, but during the recent Review the less populous States questioned this association, arguing that demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of populations were the more likely determinants of crime rates, rather than population concentration and urban size per se. As an introduction to the research reported in this paper, some of the specific arguments put forward by States are summarised below. Queensland questioned the existence of a simple correlation between high crime rates and urbanisation, claiming that rapidly growing fringe areas and tourist areas were more likely to foster higher crime rates than areas characterised merely by high population densities. At a conference on Law and Order issues held in Sydney in June 1992 by the Commission, Queensland cited a "lack of social cohesion", such as can be seen in tourist areas, as an important determinant of high crime rates and claimed that the growth of crime was not proportional to the size of an urban area. South Australia argued that socioeconomic characteristics such as unemployment and income differentials, residential stability and family structure exhibited strong correlations with rates of crime. It claimed that, despite having a relatively small urban area, relatively higher crime rates for certain offences were found in South Australia than either New South Wales or Victoria. Western Australia claimed that research had indicated that crime rates peak at a relatively low population threshold, beyond which the incidence of crime can be attributed to factors other than urban size and population concentration per se, such as the relative youth of the population, income and employment levels and standards of education.