Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (M.Phil.) - University of Queensland, 2003. / Includes bibliography.

Recent decades have witnessed a wealth of research into the concept of career stages and the relationship between these stages and the needs, attitudes and behaviours of individuals in the workforce. This high level of research interest has been fuelled by the belief that the human factor is the most critical factor in the success of organisations today and if organisations are to remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment they need to better understand the development needs, work-related attitudes and career concerns of their employees. Whilst a diverse range of career stage models have been put forward over the past fifty years, the models proposed by Super, Crites, Hummel, Moser, Overstreet and Warnath (1957) (psychological fit) and Levinson, Darrow, Klein, Levinson and McKee (1978) (age) have received considerable research attention and are generally considered to be the most useful in explaining the needs, attitudes and behaviours of individuals over the course of their career. Research into career stages has been conducted using a wide range of occupational groups. Only a limited number of researchers, however, have sought to test the utility of career stage concepts using a police sample. Despite their popularity and strong theoretical and empirical grounding, there is no known research that has tested the utility of Super et al. (1957) and Levinson et al.’s (1978) models of career stage using a police sample. The purpose of this study therefore was to contribute to the literature on career stage theory by testing the utility of these models of career stage in explaining the job satisfaction and work commitment of Queensland police officers. The study also explored the influence of other background variables that may also impact on job satisfaction and work commitment. The sample consisted of 246 police officers from the Metropolitan South Region of the Queensland Police Service. A cross sectional design was used to gather the data for the study. The Adult Career Concerns Inventory (ACCI) was used to group respondents into a career stage according to Super et al.’s conceptualisation of career stage. Respondents were also grouped into age-based career stages according to Levinson et al.’s conceptualisation of career stage. The study used established survey instruments to collect data on five facets of job satisfaction, these being satisfaction with pay, promotion, supervision, co-workers and work and five facets of work commitment, these being organisational commitment, job involvement, Protestant work ethic, career commitment and union commitment. Data was also collected on the background variables of organisational and occupational tenure, rank, gender, education level and type, type of duty performed, marital status, completion of the Queensland Police Service’s Management Development Program and membership of an Equal Employment Opportunity target group. A series of MANOVAs were used to explore the relationship between the career stage and other background variables and the various facets of job satisfaction and work commitment. Multiple regression analyses were used to determine if the results were being confounded by relationships with other independent variables. The current study failed to find any evidence to support the utility of Levinson et al.’s model in explaining job satisfaction and work commitment for Queensland Police officers. Whilst some significant differences in job satisfaction and work commitment between Levinson et al.’s age groupings were identified, none of the findings were consistent with the assumptions of their model. In fact, there was some evidence of differences in job-related attitudes across age groupings that directly contradict the assumptions of the Levinson et al. model. The current study also found no support for the utility of Super et al.’s model in explaining the job satisfaction of police officers. Some limited support, however, was found for the utility of Super et al.’s model in predicting work commitment, most notably with respect to organisational commitment, job involvement and career commitment. Differences in mean organisational commitment, job involvement and career commitment scores generally supported the propositions of Super et al., however, only the results for the exploration and disengagement stages reached statistical significance. Statistically significant relationships were found for the background variables of organisational tenure, rank, gender and type of duty. Statistically significant relationships were found for several facets of job satisfaction and work commitment. Work-related attitudes were generally found to peak in the first two years of a police officer’s tenure and then decline as tenure increased. The reason for this decline is complex and not completely clear, but may be at least partially explained by: the structural characteristics of police services; the distinct lack of support and confidence in officers; the influence of the police sub-culture; and the existence of a phenomenon known as police ‘bullshit’. Commissioned officers were found to be significantly more satisfied with promotions and constables were found to have significantly higher levels of organisational commitment than senior constables and sergeants and significantly higher levels of career commitment than sergeants. Other statistically significant relationships found in the current study include female officers reporting significantly higher levels of satisfaction with promotions than male officers and general duties officers reporting significantly higher levels of satisfaction with promotions than officers performing specialist duties and significantly higher levels of loyalty to the union than plain-clothes officers. The study concluded by highlighting the pioneering nature of the current study. It was suggested that considerably more research is necessary in order to clarify and refine the conceptualisation and measurement of police career stages and the relationship between these stages and work-related attitudes. It was recommended that future research should verify and extend the results of the current study, particularly with respect to the influence of tenure as a career stage variable and the nature and role of disengagement in any conceptualisation of career stage for police.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (PhD) -- Australian Catholic University, 2005. / Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Bibliography: p. 226-253. Also available in an electronic format via the internet.

This doctoral study comprises two parts. 75 per cent of the total weight of the submission consists of the creative component, the writing, directing and producing of a moving-image documentary in an online environment (supplementary material includes the script). Cutting edge technology (QTVR 'movies' and Live Stage Professional software) was used to create an immersive cinematic experience on the net. The Wrong Crowd can be viewed either online at www.abc.net.au/wrongcrowd or offline via a CD Rom (the latter includes the radio play 'Death of a Prostitute' which was excised from the version published via ABC Online because of legal concerns on the part of the ABC lawyers). The second part of the doctorate is the analytical contextualisation, comprising 25 per cent of the submission. This part examines the critical literature on the nature of the documentary form, documentary as history, cultural memory and the autobiography as history. Documentary exists as a truth-claim. History also embraces the search for evidence. The history documentary has a television form from which the online version is derived. The nature of the internet as a delivery platform for the moving image is discussed with reference to he truth claim as founded in the visible evidence - the news coverage - the 'this really happened'. The evidence however is open to interpretation for the historical record and is retold to suit the present power relations (the funding bodies, the commissioning editors, etc). In a CD Rom and more so online, this tendency towards individual interpretation is amplified to the point where the viewer can participate in the construction of the argument via a navigable database. Visually, the change from the temporal montage of the linear television documentary to spatial montage of the windows interface has led us to reconnect with computer-based moving images as a form of animated painting. Conventional screen theories of engagement and reception are invoked to aid in the discussion of modified cinematic conventions of editing and framing within the online form. The case-study of one of the inaugural Australian Film Commission funded online documentaries, The Wrong Crowd: Inside the Family Outside the Law, is a personal history narrative that intersects with Queensland police history from the 1950s to the late 1970s at the moments of inquiries into issues of police brutality and corruption.

No description available.

No description available.

The reform measures recommended by the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct (referred to as the "Fitzgerald Inquiry") radically transformed the face of policing in Queensland. The most significant of these recommendations was the establishment of an external oversight body, the Criminal Justice Commission (CJC), which has independence from executive government and holds the power to investigate not only police but any public servant or politician. Other recommendations included "Whistleblower" legislation, increasing sanctions for serious misconduct, lateral recruitment and promotion by merit rather than seniority. The first main research question tested in this thesis is whether these reform measures have produced improvements in the following areas: the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes for dealing with complaints against police; public confidence in those processes and the public standing of the Queensland Police Service (QPS) generally; standards of police behaviour; the incidence of corrupt conduct; and police attitudes towards reporting misconduct by their fellow officers. These Fitzgerald Inquiry reforms were strategies primarily derived from two schools of thought describing the nature and cause of police corruption: deterrence based theory (including "individual" or "rotten apple" theory) and cultural (also labeled "cultural" or "socialisation") based theory. To date most strategies used to combat police corruption have been underpinned by these theories. A third theory - situational based theory (sometimes titled "environmental" or "opportunity" theory) - which has had success in crime prevention, has been scarcely used in the area of police corruption. However, an extensive body of research has affirmed the effects of situational factors on police behaviour, suggesting the potential for the application of situational crime prevention initiatives in combatting police corruption. The second research question proposed in this thesis is whether situational based theory could also be beneficial in the prevention of police corruption. Data drawn upon to test the first research question were interviews and surveys with police officers, public attitude surveys and statistics from the processing of complaints against police. Although each source has limitations, collectively the data are sufficiently comprehensive - and robust - to defend conclusions about the general direction of the changes which have occurred. These data indicate that the Fitzgerald Inquiry reforms have, at least to some degree, had their intended impact on the QPS. These reforms have contributed to an apparent improvement in public confidence in the complaints system and the QPS generally. Moreover, the available evidence suggests that the Fitzgerald Inquiry reforms have resulted in a weakening of the police code of silence. As far as the specific issue of corruption in the QPS is concerned, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from existing data sources. However, the weight of the available evidence is that such conduct is less pervasive and occurs at lower levels than was the case in the pre-Fitzgerald Inquiry QPS. It is very difficult to ascertain which reform components were the most effective and which were not helpful at all, as these reform measures were initiated simultaneously. For example, the negative elements of the police culture may have been eliminated or reduced but whether it was the cultural strategies or one of the deterrence based strategies influencing officer behaviour remains unknown. The second main research question the thesis poses is that the use of situational crime prevention techniques has potential for contributing to the prevention of police corruption. A situational analysis of complaints against police data, including the development of a typology for classifying types of police corruption and misconduct, was used as an example of how this may be accomplished in Queensland. The study provides some, albeit limited, support for the hypothesis that situational crime prevention methods are applicable to police corruption. Based upon three years of complaints data, enough homogenous cases were gathered to enable the analysis of four categories of police corruption - Opportunistic Thefts, Driving under the Influence, Assault (while off-duty), and Theft from Employer. Given that this study only used three years of complaints data held by the CJC and more than nine years of data exist, productive situational analyses of many other categories of corruption is probable. This study also illustrated that complaints against police data are being under utilised by the QPS and the CJC. For future research in the situational analysis of complaints data, I recommend improving the gathering of data from complaints files for storage in electronic form to enable situational prevention analysis to be conducted more readily. A geographical example was used to illustrate further how complaints against police data could be more extensively utilised as a prevention tool. This analysis was conducted at an organisation unit level determined primarily by geographical factors. The complaint patterns of units of similar "task environments", as measured by unit size and type of duties performed, were compared in an attempt to identify those units experiencing the presence or absence of "bad apples" or a "negative culture". This study led to the conclusion that a divisional analysis of complaints data can provide information valuable in combatting police corruption. When task environment was held constant, it was possible to identify units experiencing the effects of possible "bad apples" and/or "negative cultures". Once these particular units were identified, intervention strategies to address the units' particular problem could be constructed. Future research in this area would involve ongoing divisional data analysis followed-up by individual assessment of officers identified as "bad apples", or a "compare-and-contrast" procedure to distinguish features requiring correction in units identified as having a "negative culture". The research findings presented in this thesis are that progress has occurred in a number of areas in addressing the problems identified by the Fitzgerald Inquiry, but that there is undoubtedly scope for more to be achieved. Despite the very significant increase in the resources and powers available to investigators post-Fitzgerald, it is still difficult to prove that a police officer engaged in misconduct, or that other officers were aware of this fact and had failed to take action, because of the constraints imposed by evidentiary and legal requirements. Thus, while it is vital to maintain an effective and credible independent complaints investigation system and ensure that there is a proper internal discipline process in place, the scope for increasing the "deterrent power" of the present system is limited. Putting more resources into complaints investigations might make a difference at the margins, but is unlikely to lead to a significant increase in the probability of a complaint being substantiated and a sanction imposed. Investing more resources in investigations has an additional cost in that such resources are then lost to other efforts to combat corruption that may provide more fruitful results in the long term. The value of an occasional substantiation is placed above the ability to engage in a large amount of prevention work. Inevitably then, three clear messages are apparent. First, continued effort must be made to modify the organisational climate of the QPS in terms of commitment to integrity. Recommended strategies to accomplish this end are to continue the recruitment of more educated, female and older officers to reduce police-citizen conflict and the negative elements of the police culture, and also to develop a comprehensive, integrated approach to ethics education for QPS officers at all ranks and positions. Second, other forms of deterrence against misconduct are needed such as the use of covert strategies like integrity testing which could be conducted in conjunction with the CJC. Third, a greater emphasis needs to be placed on developing and implementing preventive strategies. This thesis has shown that valuable prevention strategies can be gained from situational and divisional analysis of complaints data, and a range of proactive management options based upon situational crime prevention theory are recommended. These strategies have application in any police service.