Police can’t tell if thousands of recruits helped reduce crime, report finds

Police accountability lawyer Jeremy King said police, like any government department, needed to adequately illustrate why they were entitled to funding.

“At a time when people are looking at police forces, Victoria is an anomaly where the government and Victoria Police have a more, more, more approach. When they can’t back up that, it’s actually effecting real change,” he said.

King said the report demonstrated why an external body, such as an ombudsman, was required to scrutinise the force and ensure police spending was effective and subject to independent oversight.

Victoria has become one of the most heavily policed states in Australia after a two-decade law and order rivalry between Labor and the Coalition helped build the country’s largest law enforcement organisation.

The state’s war on crime has resulted in spending on police, courts and prisons grow at double or triple the rate of other states and territories over the past decade, and Victoria now arrests and jails people at levels not seen since the 19th century.

Underlining the political priority given to police numbers and law and order, growth in the criminal justice system spending has outstripped that of education and health since 2013.

“Victoria Police does not have a strategic workforce plan. It does not have a current and accurate understanding of its current or future staffing requirements. As a result, it cannot show if the number of police officers it has meets demand,” the Auditor-General’s report says.

“Despite this, Victoria Police has received more than 3200 new police officers since 2016.”

The report also criticised the police Staff Allocation Model, which determines where officers are allocated based on need.

In November last year, Victoria Police had 22,000 personnel and government funding worth $4 billion a year, surpassing that of NSW Police even though the northern state is three times the geographical size and has 1.4 million more people.

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