A Summary Analysis of Police Deaths in Australia: Implications for Prevention

This paper summarises the dimensions and immediate causes of officer deaths on‐duty in Australia from the establishment of police forces in the nineteenth century to 2007. Official police records were used to identify the year and the immediate circumstances of deaths. The results strongly support an emerging international knowledge base about police deaths: that up to three‐quarters are ‘'accidental'’ and as few as one‐quarter are the result of an attack by an offender; that the very large majority of accidents involve motor vehicles; that as a result of improvements in procedures and technology, in the post World War Two period, officer fatalities have been declining as a proportion of police numbers; and, that further reductions are obtainable through stricter application of a wider range of prevention strategies. The paper concludes by mapping out some key strategies, including curtailing speeding in police vehicles; keeping police off the road at vehicle stops and roadblocks; and, better risk management procedures in raids, sieges, arrests, and the serving of warrants.

Notes

The authors would like to thank the Australian Federal Police and Northern Territory and Tasmania Police for supplying data.

Contact information: Troy Allard, Research Fellow, JMAG, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, 4111, Australia. Telephone/Fax: (011–61) (0) 7 373 55649/55608. E‐mail: [email protected]

Contact information: Tim Prenzler, Chief Investigator, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security; Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, 4111, Australia. Telephone/Fax: (011–61) (0) 7 373 55613/55608. E‐mail: [email protected]