Police officer gender and excessive force complaints: an Australian study

ABSTRACT

Issues of force and excessive force remain prominent in policing in most jurisdictions. This study addresses the relationship between officer gender and force-related allegations, and adds to the growing literature on women in policing and strategies to reduce police-citizen conflict. The study utilised six years of Queensland police data from 2007/2008 to 2012/2013 involving 4974 force-related complaint files and 11,493 allegations, to explore gender patterns while also considering rank, length of service, age, sub-type of allegation, and complaint outcomes. The main finding was that females made up 26% of employed officers, but only 16% of officers receiving complaints and 15% of officers subject to specific allegations. In addition, females had significantly fewer repeat complaints, fewer single subject officer complaints, and complaints against females reduced more quickly with length of service. The findings support the case for significant benefits from improved female representation in policing. At the same time, the paper includes a number of qualifiers regarding support for female officers and optimal management of use of force training and procedures.

KEYWORDS:

• Police complaints
• gender
• use of force
• assault

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the assistance provided by the Queensland Police Service. The views expressed in this material are those of the authors and are not those of the Queensland Police Service. Responsibility for any errors of omission or commission remains with the authors. The Queensland Police Service expressly disclaims any liability for any damage resulting from the use of the material contained in this publication and will not be responsible for any loss, howsoever arising, from use of or reliance on this material.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This method is adopted in order to enable analysis of gender of subject officers and differs from how the number of complaints would be calculated as standard practice, for example, in police annual reports.

2. For example, an individual could have multiple allegations made about them in relation to the one incident, that is, that they were both rude and used force excessively, and so these multiple entries are counted as only one ‘complaint’. Allegations are analysed separately later in the paper.

3. This analysis was rerun to account for the possibility of repeat complaints against subject officers skewing results. Where officers had repeated complaints, only the age/service length at the first complaint was taken into account (officer as unit of analysis, not complaint); the results were consistent with those reported here, showing no bias from the inclusion of this data.