From Service to Force? Policing New South Wales: To Protect and to Serve: The Untold Truth about the New South Wales Police Service; Watching the Detectives: When a Policewoman Turns Whistleblower; Peter Ryan: The Inside Story; Qualitative and Strategic Audit of the Reform Process of NSW Police: Report for Year 3, July 2001-June 2002

The 1989 Fitzgerald Report into police and governmental corruption in Queensland has been a model for public sector reform in Australia. It is especially timely to consider the impact of those reforms in light of the current overhaul of the largest police agency in Australia, the New South Wales Police Service, and of continuing problems with public sector probity in other states. Queensland made significant advances in improving electoral and administrative processes, and creating external independent oversight of the police. Nonetheless, unforeseen gaps in the Fitzgerald agenda allowed reactionary forces to dilute the reform process. Three primary areas remain ‘unreconstructed’. Reform has not been firmly established from the top down, beginning with progressing the system of representative democracy and opening up cabinet. Additionally, the Police Service appears to have successfully resisted the prescribed re-orientation away from law enforcement to community policing. Detection and control of misconduct also remain weak. A more interventionist Criminal Justice Commission is needed, with more proactive strategies for developing compliance with ethical standards.

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Embedded Ethics: Discourse and Power in the New South Wales Police Service

Organization Studies ◽

10.1177/0170840608100515 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

pp. 73-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

Ray Gordon ◽

Stewart Clegg ◽

Martin Kornberger

Keyword(s):

Social Action ◽

New South ◽

Research Question ◽

New South Wales ◽

Organizational Life ◽

Ethical Practices ◽

Police Service ◽

South Wales ◽

Institutional Forces ◽

Ethical Change

In this paper we report an ethnographic research study conducted in one of the world's largest police organizations, the New South Wales Police Service. Our research question was, `How do forms of power shape organizational members' ethical practices?' We look at existing theories that propose the deployment of two interrelated arguments: that ethics are embedded in organizational practices and discourse at a micro-level of everyday organizational life, which is contrasted with a focus on the macro-organizational, institutional forces that are seen to have an impact on ethics. Resisting this distinction between the `micro' and the `macro', we build on these two bodies of knowledge to explain ethical change as deeply embedded in power relations that traverse the scale of social action.

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