That examination drew on input from African young people and "experienced community workers". It involved qualitative research, using semi-formal interviews, focus groups, observational notes and documentation such as policy documents and correspondence. The researchers asked -
• What are African young people’s experience of policing?The report claims that -
• What are African young people’s understandings of the role and nature of that policing?
• How do community workers understand the role and nature of the policing of African young people?
• What do African young people and community workers understand as the source of conflict between young people and police?
• What outcomes are community workers, African young people, and police seeking via their involvement in community policing activities?
• What are some of the effects of involvement in community policing activities on the part of both African young people and the police?
African young people are over-policed in the regions of the study. This overpolicing is racialised.It argues that -
Police enforce particular notions of acceptable usage of public space. This results in police-youth conflict.
Routine police harassment of African young people as well as police violence is either under-reported to the relevant oversight bodies, or these bodies are not adequately investigating these incidents, or both. The lack of an effective oversight body amounts to African young people (and probably other groups as well) being structurally excluded from justice.
Despite generally having a good understanding of their formal rights, for the most part young people cannot assert these rights — in fact asserting them often results in police hostility and aggression.
Community policing activities do not necessarily result in police being more responsive to marginal communities' concerns.In response it recommends that -
Fostering closer relationships between young people and police can ultimately be damaging for young people. Police can use these relationships for intelligence gathering, which can lead to criminal proceedings; and to pursue policy objectives, such as advocating for particular 'solutions' to conflict over others.
Where the community sector and young people became involved in community policing activities, the need to push for young people's actual entitlements (for example to freely use public space) is shifted off the agenda.
Rather than being contradictory, concurrent community policing and overpolicing practices are in effect different tactics to exercise police authority to the same ends.
There is very little evidence that community policing ameliorates the commonly identified negative impacts of traditional over-policing practices.
Community policing contributes to over-policing by adding an additional layer of police presence and surveillance.
Furthermore, African young people experience intensified policing in this fashion because they are African.
Any responses to community-police relations by community networks, welfare organisations or policy bodies are led by, and designed in collaboration with, those most heavily affected by policing — Indigenous people, young people, migrants, ethnic minorities, homeless people, those experiencing mental illness, GBLTI communities and others.
People's negative experiences of policing be publicly acknowledged by the community sector, and that the sector offers support to those people being negatively affected by policing.
Other options for intervening in negative community-police relations are carefully canvassed instead of, or in conjunction with involvement in community policing activities like those described in this report. Clear objectives and guidelines for any joint community-police activities should be set before community organisations facilitate further contact between young people and police.
Policy bodies and the community sector undertake more research, which seeks to examine relationships between police and racialised communities. This should include new arrivals under the refugee program, and other minority groups such as the Pacific Islander community.
The multicultural lobby and relevant policy bodies work to significantly widen the scope of what are considered 'legitimate' responses to policing issues.
Policy bodies support calls for greater police accountability, and actively support grassroots initiatives that seek to intervene in police-community relations.
