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Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
http://anj.sagepub.com/
'Cop[ying] it Sweet': Police Media Units and the Making of News

Alyce McGovern and Murray Lee
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 2010 43: 444
DOI: 10.1375/acri.43.3.444
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Cop[ying] it Sweet: Police Media Units

and the Making of News
Alyce McGovern
University of New South Wales, Australia
Murray Lee
University of Sydney, Australia
ver the past two decades police media units have played an everincreasing role in managing the dissemination of information
between the police and media organisations. Using the example of the
New South Wales Police Media Unit in Australia (hereafter NSW PMU)
this article assesses the journalistic deployment of PMU information and
develops a broader sociopolitical argument explaining the growth of PMUs
more generally. We analyse qualitative research data, in the form of interviews with journalists and NSW PMU staff (n = 29), and quantitative data
from an analysis of two Sydney-based daily newspapers. We suggest that
the growth of PMUs can be explained with reference to new programs of
governing crime that developed throughout the last quarter of the 20th
century as well as significant changes to the global media landscape.
Keywords: police media relations, NSW Police Media Unit, law and order, news
values, crime reporting, culture of control
Behind the Headlines

The 47-year-old woman sustained superficial injuries after allegedly being repeatedly
kicked and punched by a 38-year-old man. It will also be alleged the man threatened
the woman with a firearm. Officers using a firearm detection dog executed a search
warrant on the address, allegedly seizing two sawn-off rifles and more than 3,000 live
rounds of ammunition. (NSW Police Media Unit, July 27, 2006)
The 47-year-old woman suffered superficial injuries when kicked and punched by a
man, 38. It is also alleged the man threatened her with a firearm. Officers using a
firearm detection dog allegedly seized two sawn-off rifles and more than 3,000 live
rounds. (The Daily Telegraph, July 28, 2006, p. 14)
The above direct quotes, one a press release from the NSW PMU, the other its
reproduction in The Daily Telegraph, provide the context for this article; an analysis
of information-sharing between police and media representatives. The almost
Address for correspondence: Dr Alyce McGovern, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Kensington Campus, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052,
Australia. E-mail: a.mcgovern@unsw.edu.au
444
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

VOLUME 43 NUMBER 3 2010 PP. 444464
POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS
mundane reproduction of police press releases in the mainstream media, as

evidenced above, is perhaps for the most part innocuous. However, upon closer
analysis, the breadth of such reproductions also provides us with a telling picture of
just how, and by whom, stories regarding law, order and criminal justice are framed.
This article is concerned with the dynamics of this framing in the context of police
media interactions with the NSW Police Force, and their Media Unit, serving as a
case study/site for analysis. As well as being the oldest police organisation in
Australia, the NSW Police Force is also the largest, with 15,801 members1 (Chan,
2007; Chan & Dixon, 2007; NSW Police Force, 2010).
We begin this study with a necessarily focused discussion of the place of crime in
the media, and the role of the police and the media in shaping understandings of
law and order issues. Following this we look more specifically at the NSW situation
by outlining the emergence of the NSW PMU, the key site for our analysis. The
article then presents research findings from two interconnected empirical studies;
the first, an analysis of the reproduction of police press releases in the mainstream
media and the second, semistructured research interviews with key police media
officers and journalists. We analyse the results of this research within the broader
context of policemedia relations, focusing on the sociopolitical significance of
close relationships between policing organisations and the media.
Scene Setting
Media outlets allocate significant column space and airtime to stories about crime
and criminality. Cohen (p. 17) noted back in 1972 that the mass media devote a
great deal of energy to deviance; sensational crimes, scandals, bizarre happenings
and strange goings on, and if anything the coverage of the strange and grotesque has
only increased with the development of news magazine, infotainment and reality
television style programming to say nothing of emerging media sources like the
internet (Jewkes, 2004). There is little doubt media coverage plays a significant role
in the ways in which the community frames and views issues of crime, law and order,
and social control (Chibnall, 1977; Hogg & Brown, 1998; Lee, 2007). For the most
part, the community does not get its information about crime from personal experience, but from the news media. Sociologists, media theorists and criminologists have
now long understood that both the construction and consumption of crime stories is
complex, bidirectional and multidimensional (Mawby, 2007; Reiner, 2002). Media
outlets and their staff are not only influenced in their publication choices by their
real, and imagined, audiences, but they also take an active role in the construction of
such stories; agenda setting and reproducing the hegemonic ideologies of the
primary definers with which they communicate, such as the police (Hall, Critcher,
Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Surette, 1998). With commercial, financial and
consumer pressures now impacting on staffing within media organisations, as well as
the impact of technology such as the internet (Burton 2007; Chermak, 1995; Cooke
& Sturges, 2009; Davis 2000; Deacon & Golding 1994; Jiggins 2007; Lovell 2002;
Mawby, 2002; Salter 1994), the likelihood of all-rounder, general reporters is on the
increase, such that crime reporting is no longer the realm of specialist reporters alone
(Jiggins, 2007). While, as Reiner (2002) and Hall et al. (1978) argue, specialist
reporters foster contacts that might leave them open to their stories being filtered

445
ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE
through the eyes of these contacts, the introduction of the generalist reporter into
the field of crime reporting also suffers from a similar fate, if via different means.
Given the broad spectrum of stories such reporters deal with on a day-to-day basis,
one could argue that their ability to foster and maintain close sources within policing
agencies is limited, thus generating a reliance on PMUs, which provide information
to journalists in an efficient and relatively effective way.
Likewise, audiences are no longer seen as passive consumers. Often they are
even enlisted in the project of news making, through being encouraged to send tipoffs, information and images to news agencies.2 As Bloustien and Israel (2006, p.
46) put it, news programming does not mirror crime and its control; Journalists
actively construct their stories by choosing particular kinds of events and presenting
them to their assumed audience in terms of what they think will make such events
intelligible. It follows that individuals and institutions that are in a position to
provide media organisations with information about crime are likely to have a
significant input into the construction of crime narratives within particular cultural
milieus (Chibnall, 1977; Cooke & Sturges, 2009).
Perhaps the most influential organisations when it comes to information about
crime are policing agencies themselves. As the agencies responsible for order
maintenance, and with a monopoly over the state-sanctioned use of force, police
are in a privileged position when it comes to the ownership and dissemination of
crime information (Cooke & Sturges, 2009). While early understandings of police
and their role were primarily acquired through the print media of pamphlets,
newspapers and memoirs, blurring the lines between fact and fiction (Mawby, 2007,
pp. 147150, 151156), today the police play an active role in their portrayals, both
fictional and factual (see also Schlesinger & Tumber, 1993, 1994).
What has emerged from these representations of police and their work,
especially the more recent portrayals, are criticisms about the level of association
between police and the producers of television series that purport to be factual
(Mawby, 2007, p. 156). As Mawby argues, the policemedia relationship is a series
of co-existing relationships that ebb and flow in terms of dominance and control
and the balance of power differs over time and location and at national and local
levels (2007, p. 156; see also Cooke & Sturges, 2009, p. 421).
Freckelton (1988, p. 78) has argued that a symbiotic relationship exists
between some police and media representatives, a relationship that is not conducive
to high quality, critical, investigative journalism on issues of criminal justice or
policing. Rather, he argues, there is an unnecessary and improper reliance upon
unnamed police sources and an unwillingness to seek out independent, alternative viewpoints. Freckeltons assessment becomes even more pertinent when one
considers the increasing prominence and influence of professionalised media units
within todays policing agencies, and the myriad of developments impacting upon
the media industry more broadly. Dwindling media budgets, reduced resources, the
growth of low-cost infotainment productions and the proliferation of generalist
reporters means that the police have become the primary definers (Hall et al., 1978)
of policing matters. It follows then that working relationships between media organisations, journalists and police have implications for the ways in which information
about crime, law and order, and policing is reported in the news media and what in
these crime narratives is likely to count as truth in the eyes of the public.
446

A Good Story
In 1977 Steve Chibnall argued that crime reporting had been ignored by academic
researchers or treated as essentially apolitical (1977, p. 1). Since then, much has
been written about the way in which crime is reported in the media, and the ways
by which journalists go about constructing or mediating news (see Ericson, Baranek,
& Chan, 1989, 1991; Fishman, 1981; Hall et al., 1978; Kelly, 1987; Mawby, 1998,
2003; Reiner, 2002, 2003). However, it is useful to return to Chibnalls eight news
values, as they provide an instructive framework through which the utility of Police
Media Units to the media might be better assessed. Chibnall (1977) suggested crime
stories are attractive to media organisations where they include the values of
immediacy, dramatisation, personalisation, simplification, titillation, conventionalism,
structured access and novelty. Of particular importance to the argument that follows
are the concepts of immediacy, that events that have just happened are more
newsworthy; simplification, the reduction of stories to simple and often black and
white dichotomies; conventionalism, the ability of an event to fit into existing
themes or knowledge structures; structured access, agents such as the police who are
privileged sources for stories; and novelty, that stories of the bizarre, not the
mundane, dominate crime reportage. While we suggest Chibnalls account falls
short of providing the tools for a full sociopolitical analysis of policemedia relationships in the context of PMUs, it is clear from the discussion that follows that PMUs
are able to facilitate for media outlets many of Chibnalls attributes of newsworthiness. As we argue below, the current climate of police relations with the media has
seen a shift from information reportage no matter how one-sided this information might sometimes be to sophisticated media management. Police media units
are illustrative of this shift.
Context: The NSW Police Media Unit

In recent times police media units, or police public relations branches, have grown
significantly in number, size and in their importance as filters for police public
relations. The first formal public relations branch specifically created to deal with
media issues within the NSW Police Force was introduced in 1964 (NSW Police
Force, 1965) and can be considered as a reaction to what has been described as a
crisis of consent or confidence in police organisations that was being experienced
across much of the western world during the 1960s and 1970s (Edwards, 2005;
Finnane, 1990, 1994). In the Australian context, the 1960s and 1970s marked a
period of political and social dissent over matters such as Australias involvement in
the Vietnam War, Indigenous rights, standards of health and welfare, the equality of
women, abortion law reform and censorship matters (Chan, 1997; Edwards, 2005;
Finnane, 1987, 1990, 1994). Internationally, civil rights groups including Blacks,
women, gays, prisoners and mental patients became increasingly affirmed and
their influence grew, leading to important shifts in the balance of power between
government and the governed (Garland, 2001).
This naturally had an effect on policing, as police were increasingly being seen
as aligned with the government of the day and out of touch with the community. As
Finnane notes, during the 1960s the organisation and effectiveness of policing in
New South Wales became a topic of increasing public comment and political dispu-

447
tation (1999, p. 13). Greater public interest in policing issues led to closer public
scrutiny of those in authority and it became more common for police authority to be
questioned (Edwards, 2005). In particular, issues of public order control and police
powers came under scrutiny, especially as they related to the ways in which police,
under the pressure of government, dealt with public dissent and protest. Certainly,
the new role television played in covering many of these issues would have also had
an impact on how these matters were viewed by the public, who were able for the
first time to witness the police role in many of these protests (Edwards, 2005). In
NSW, high-level discussion within the force suggested the need for closer, more
productive, ties to journalists and media organisations.
When the NSW Police Force Public Relations Branch was established in 1964 it
was tasked with the promotion of police public relations; assisting materially in the
investigation of serious crimes and crime prevention, not only through press, radio
and television broadcasts of information relating to cases, but also through the
publication of photographs and descriptions of people who were suspected victims
of crime (NSW Police Force, 1965). In the 1964 Annual Report it was highlighted
that the activities of the Public Relations Branch were expected to increase in the
near future (NSW Police Force, 1965).
Indeed, we have seen over recent decades the role and scope of the public
relations work of this branch flourish. Today this branch, now known as the NSW
Police Media Unit (NSW PMU), has expanded its repertoire as a dedicated media
liaison team, carrying forward preferred messages to the public via a wide variety
of media (NSW Police Force, 2010). The unit not only responds to enquiries, but
also engages in proactive media work in conjunction with the Corporate
Communications Unit. These proactive strategies have led to commercial arrangements with a number of media organisations, particularly on police reality television shows such as The Force, The Recruits and Missing Persons Unit, as well as
engagement with new media formats such as social networking sites and online
video broadcasting (McGovern, 2009). Bureaucratically, the NSW PMU is an arm
of the Public Affairs Branch of the NSW Police Force, which interestingly also
plays host to the Forces Freedom of Information Unit (FOIU). Given the FOIUs
recent history, which has seen it accused of failing to respond adequately to
requests (NSW Ombudsman, 2008), its home in the Public Affairs Branch makes
it appear positively Orwellian.3
The NSW PMU is now a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week operation, staffed by
experienced journalists, public relations specialists and police officers (NSW
Police, 2004, p. 5). The continued growth of the unit is evidenced by the fact that
in 2009 its full-time staff numbered 22. There is also a significant number of parttime staff. Staff include both civilian employees, typically with journalistic/
communications training and experience, and seconded uniformed officers
(OBrien, 2008). The Police Media Unit, along with all NSW Police Force employees, is governed by the New South Wales Police Media Policy (NSW Police, 2004).4
Method
The analysis and discussion that follows is based on two broad sources of original
empirical data.5 First, press releases published by the NSW PMU on the NSW
448

Police Force website were monitored over the month of March.6 During this onemonth period two major daily newspapers from the Sydney metropolitan area
The Daily Telegraph7 and the Sydney Morning Herald8 were monitored and the
content of crime- and police-related stories compared to that of the police media
releases. The stories were then categorised based on the relationship between the
media release and the media story. Such an analysis obviously has two limitations.
We acknowledge that it focuses only on the print media and its focus period is
relatively short. Despite this, we also believe it illustrates sufficiently the extent to
which the NSW PMU influences the framing of criminal justice issues in the New
South Wales press in what could be described as an unremarkable month in regard
to exceptional crime stories.
Second, during 2005 and 2006, research interviews were conducted with 16
police roundsmen and crime reporters working in radio, television and newspapers
in the Sydney metropolitan area. During the same period, research interviews were
also conducted with thirteen current and former staff members of the NSW Police
Media Unit and while these are not the main focus of this article they do provide
some backdrop to the analysis that follows. In the course of both sets of interviews
respondents were asked a range of questions about the nature of their police/media
interactions and what they considered was the role of the NSW PMU.9 It is also
worth highlighting that the interviews reflect a particular historical snapshot of
what is a dynamic relationship between the NSW Police Media Unit and journalists. Participants in the research were recruited via purposive sampling, a way of
selecting participants representative of a specific set of characteristics or with a
specific purpose in mind (Neuman, 2000; Robson, 1993, p. 141).10 Purposive
sampling was a key method of allowing key stakeholders and relevant individuals in
these relationships to be approached to participate. A total of 29 people were interviewed for this research project, constituting police/crime reporters, and current and
former NSW PMU staffers. While all respondents have been fully de-identified we
have used numeric aliases so that a continuity of responses can be established where
relevant. As the interactions between journalists and NSW Police Media Unit is
the main object of study, the central aim of the interviews was to enable the authors
to gain a deeper understanding of the nuances of the relationships between journalists and police in New South Wales.
Results 1: Media Content Or a Content Media

Content analysis has long been a mainstay of media analysis when it comes to crime
reportage (Reiner, 2002; Surette, 1998). The aim of assessing media releases and
subsequent media content in this study, however, was not to specifically look at
what was reported but to consider just how closely the media in this case the
daily newspapers reproduced information provided by the NSW PMU. In this
sense this part of our analysis is aimed at identifying or problematising the issue we
wish to analyse; this first section frames and triangulates the later qualitative discussion. NSW PMU media releases and the subsequent printed news stories were
collected, collated and compared and the news stories were grouped in one of four
categories on the basis of their content of NSW PMU-based text and the form of
their reproduction in the newspapers. The categories are as follows:

449
1. Paraphrased
Articles attributed to this category were classified as being paraphrased almost wordfor-word, or indeed plagiarised entirely from the corresponding media release. There
was no original journalistic input in articles included in this category.
2. Semi-Paraphrased
Articles within this category were heavily drawn from the corresponding media
release but also contained some additional material. In most cases, this additional
information was obtained from the court appearances of alleged offenders.
Nonetheless, articles categorised here almost without exception followed the media
unit press release narrative.
3. Prompted
Articles in this category were prompted by a specific and identifiable media release,
but included supplementary information from other sources much of the time this
information was presumably from a journalistic follow up with the NSW PMU.
Follow up articles were also included in this category.
4. Nonmedia Release Articles
These articles appeared unprompted by any official Police Media Releases and were
apparently unrelated to previous incidents. Many dealt with controversial or negative
issues involving police and may have used unofficial or anonymous police sources.
Many could be characterised as being investigative in nature.
News stories were further broken down on the basis of the story being credited to
the authorship of a particular journalist. During our one-month monitoring period
the NSW PMU produced an astonishing 260 media releases, an average of 8.5 per
day. This sheer volume of information provides media organisations with a glut of
potential stories, although doubtless some are deemed more newsworthy than
others. The volume of releases, quite apart from their content, also speaks to
Chibnalls news value of immediacy. At 8.5 stories per day there are always new
stories to choose from, most of which come hot off the press.11 The Daily Telegraph12
and Sunday Telegraph published a total of 119 crime-related articles (see Table 1)
and The Sydney Morning and Sun Herald a total of 111 (see Table 2). In The Daily
Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph 69% of all crime-related articles were derived from
releases, with the remaining 31% being unrelated to any official NSW PMU
releases.13 Similarly, 67% of articles in The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald
were linked to releases, with 33% being unrelated.
As is demonstrated in Tables 1 and 2, there was a high percentage of articles
paraphrased from the content of NSW Police Media Releases with 35% of all
Telegraph crime stories and 33% of all Herald crime stories falling within this
category. Attribution to an author (not the PMU but a journalist author) for these
stories was more likely in The Herald (Fairfax publishing) (24) than in The Telegraph
(Murdoch News Ltd) (0). It should be noted that although it was not the aim of
this section of the analysis to assess the narratives of the stories, it was clear in most
cases that those stories closely related to the NSW PMU media release generally
painted the police in a positive light.
The heavy overall reliance on the NSW PMU as a source, and the fact that
journalists were relatively unlikely to seek out other sources, does raise serious
questions about the impartiality of reportage and the power of police organisations
450

TABLE 1
The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Content Analysis Results
The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph
Paraphrased
Author
Half paraphrased
No author
Author
42
0
42
Prompted
No author
Author
26
Non-media release
No author
Author
34
31
No author
3
37
TABLE 2
The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald Content Analysis Results
The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald

Paraphrased
Half paraphrased
Prompt
Non-media release
Author
No author
Author
No author
Author
No author
Author
No author
24
13
12
22
36
37
12
25
37
to influence and frame crime news. It also raises questions about journalistic
integrity and the shrinking resources available for the maintenance of the high
quality news journalism vital to liberal or social democratic societies such as
Australia. In the next section we discuss the views of journalists and employees of
the NSW PMU with the objective of making sense of this high level or reproduction of PMU news stories.
Results 2: Making News Today or Media Instrumentalism

In the overview of the results of the interview material that follows we have divided
the discussion into three themes emergent from the data. These are: media instrumentalism; taming the system; and new resistances. These themes then provide the
basis for the theory and discussion that follows in the final section of the article.
There is little doubt the growth of PMUs has also impacted upon the ways in
which police and journalists interact. As our interview data attests, things are very
different now from the bad (or indeed good depending on your view) old days of
informal meetings at local hotels, where information passed from police working on
a case to the eager journalist (see, e.g., Chappell & Wilson, 1969). Of course, police
and policing organisations themselves are also operating in a newly diversified
media environment where the traditional news media formats of newspapers, radio,
and television have been joined by a plethora of new media forms and formats
most significantly internet media sources as diverse as blog sites, YouTube, and
Twitter.14 Although somewhat ambivalent about the NSW PMUs role, journalists
nevertheless freely admit to the utility of the unit as being instrumental to their
reporting roles. Most journalists interviewed suggested that they used the PMU

451
regularly while being cogent of its role as a public relations unit putting a positive
spin on police activities. As one journalist suggested:
Its a siphoning unit in a very positive way it saves me having to ring around every
single [local area command] to see whats gone on overnight. At the same time they
can filter what is sent out to us because obviously their function is to not only get the
news out there, but to make sure its all good news. [They are] essentially a PR firm.
(Journalist 1)
Staff at the Media Unit suggested unreservedly that their role was, as one staff
member put it, to try and portray the police always in a good light. Such statements no doubt reflect the policy that guides the unit, 15 but it also tells us
something of the staffs self-awareness of their roles. Journalists, they suggested,
often phone the Media Unit hourly in order to update the latest news, check that
nothings going on or simply call in the hope of being first to report major events.
The constant communication between journalists and the NSW PMU indicates
that our content analysis only scratches the surface of the true quantity of information that moves from the NSW PMU to journalists on a daily basis, again highlighting the PMU as a source of not just novel or new stories, but also indicating its
privileged position as an institute of structured access.
This in itself presents an interesting question; with the PMU operating 24 hours
a day, continually putting out media releases, holding regular press conferences and
contacting journalists with information on various matters, does the existence of a
Media Unit within the NSW Police Force make it easy for some journalists to
overlook the critical investigative function of their reporting? Grattan (1998, p. 42)
argues that spin can encourage lazy journalism and distorted journalism, where
material is accepted uncritically from spin factories, such as PMUs. Jiggins (2007,
pp. 204206) has also likened journalists to lapdogs, more so than watchdogs.
One journalist seemed to agree with this assessment:
The police could offer cheap sensation to journalists and journalists would be like
Pavlovs dogs and they would salivate at this and they would say I got the scoop but
they wouldnt think about what was the motivation of the police officer giving them
that. (Journalist 12)
When other journalists and PMU staff were questioned on the issue of lazy journalism they were almost unanimous in their response. Some questioned the investigative capabilities of other journalists and the roles of the roundsmen: I dont think
many police reporters do original investigations at all. You know, the investigation
doesnt really go beyond the coppers that will give them a bit of information
(Journalist 3). While others felt that that some journalists simply overlooked their
responsibilities, they noted that such reportage would only take the reporter so far
in their career: I think most media outlets expect a bit more than press releases and
sound bites, sometimes they need, you know, harder information than they are
going to get from a press release (Journalist 4). Some saw it as more acceptable to
cover the smaller stories without going to other sources, suggesting that if the story
was important enough they would follow things up:
452

Yeah, in particular with the smaller stories, like you know, if the Media Unit puts out
an armed hold-up or something, and theyve got the information there for us, we just
write briefs from the information they give us. (Journalist 5)
This estimation reflects Reiners (2002, p. 222) view that many news stories are just
routine fillers, following a clearly established paradigm, and thus conform to a
similar pattern of presentation, only with different names and dates according to the
event. The capacity of the Media Unit to provide easy simplification of conventional
stories makes it a very attractive source of such briefs. While the PMU was seen as
an important and up-to-date accessible source of novel information, there was some
circumspection about the quality of all information one was likely to receive. The
journalist quoted below appeared to have a conflicting view of the NSW PMU,
noting its capacity to reduce the quality of reportage while also celebrating its
ability to provide immediacy:
It breeds lazy journalists. But its also very convenient, particularly for some aspects of
the media like radio, where we need information quickly. Without it you are required
to go to different sources, and in a sense it legitimises the cowboys of the industry
who are prepared to go to print without having checked as many sources as possible
or legitimising it through some officially sanctioned authority. (Journalist 6)
For another journalist the NSW PMU, and the ease with which journalists replicate
information provided to them by the unit, was simply indicative of a culture that
was spreading across the board, where spin doctors increasingly played a role in
news reporting:
That doesnt just happen because of the Police Media Unit, that happens because of
spin doctors everywhere, I mean thats perfectly accurate, yeah if youre lazy But
yeah theres always people who undoubtedly get things from the Media Unit, type it
in as a press release, and let it go. (Journalist 7)
Literature around the PR State (see Deacon & Golding, 1994) tells us that this is a
common feature of modern-day state institutions such as the police, as governments
look towards public relations professionals and opportunities to ensure that the
media carry forward their preferred messages to the public. Importantly, this
highlights a significant shift in policemedia relationships, from police as sources of
information to police organisations as framing and constructing crime narratives.
Analytically too this demonstrates the limitations of Chibnalls (1977) instrumentalist analytical framework and necessitates a change of register so as to interrogate
the sociopolitical and cultural significance of the PMU. As is illustrated by the
following transcripts, the PMU also has a role in taming the system of policing.
Taming the System

Looking back again at the role of the PMU, journalists also told us of how the NSW
PMU often rewarded particularly helpful reporters with scoops or exclusives
providing incentives to publish the police angle. Of course, the inverse was also true
and it was suggested that reporters could be punished for failure to publish the
police line. As one disgruntled investigative reporter put it:

453
Theres no doubt that there was a conflict between the Herald and counter-terrorist
type people and the Police Media Unit [two nights before an operation] and the
Herald was out of the loop and The Daily Telegraph got a leak that there was an operation, you know, stand by for an operation, and so did Channel Nine. That could
only come from them [the PMU]. (Journalist 2)
Journalists however were not nave as to the real role of the NSW PMU in producing spin and publicising the police positively:
Youve got to keep in mind though that this sort of information is part of an agenda,
which may be to create generally a good news story for the police, it may be a story
that shows that theyre being, you know, tough on crime. It might be story that shows
that the Commissioner was taking a hard line in respect to something. It may be a
critic of the police is cast in a bad light, it may be any number of things. But its got a
hidden agenda, and the problem with that is sometimes those stories make good
stories, but you get the effect whereby these stories are being spoon-fed and you know,
I suppose its open to the idea that this is spin. (Journalist 5)
Another put it in terms of this contradiction between risk communication and

information control:
I suppose, in an ideal world they are there to provide information, and to be as transparent as they can within the bounds of operational security and that sort of thing. I
think theyve now evolved into an extremely sophisticated propaganda tool I
think, theres a difficulty between drawing the line between public interest and public
information, and police spin. (Journalist 11)
It was also suggested that there was a further unwritten role of the NSW PMU that
went beyond positive spin. This was to try and smother negative stories about the
police. A taming of the system where sensitive interactions are referred up:
I think the reality is that they are meant to provide a limited amount of factual information regarding any story of interest and general stories of interest and certainly any
operational story of interest to journalists. Over and above that I think their unwritten role is to smother negative police stories, full stop. I dont think that individuals
within the unit are employed with the express purpose of trying to trip journalists up,
hide things from them, you know, to go out there and choke the life out of negative
coverage of police, but, they are only given a certain amount of information
themselves and if something becomes problematic, they are told to refer it to
someone more senior and then a different process begins again. (Journalist 5)
A former staff member of the NSW PMU went as far as to suggest that the unit was
primarily concerned with protecting the image of the Police Minister.16 This
position has also been aired publicly with the suggestion that the PMUs role is
contrary to the traditional separation of powers:
[Their role is] to protect the Minister, well they shouldnt be. What they were really
doing there when I was there was protecting the Minister and the image of the
department. All right the image of the departments fair enough The main
function of that Media Unit should be to inform, keep the public informed of important events that they need to know Number 1 is to keep the public informed and
give the public a sense of safety, that police are out there doing their job, and number
two is to help police operationally through the media, so theyre the bridge, they
should be the bridge, but theyre not. Theyre a big gap. (Ex-PMU/Other 3)
454

Indeed, from the point of view of many journalists the NSW PMU could be conceptualised more like a gatekeeper to NSW Police Force, and indeed any information
relating to its operation.
New Resistances
Journalists and reporters interviewed did not always so easily succumb to police and
NSW PMU attempts to control information. In fact, many actively resisted engaging with the Media Unit when they felt they were being obstructed:
When they start to say look, lets get in the way of this exercise then, thats when I
get cross and thats when I dont want to deal with them. Because thats not their job,
their job is simply to protect their reputation and tell the truth. Their job is not to
obstruct someone else trying to tell the truth. (Journalist 3)
As one journalist emphasised, you do have to develop independent sources. These

were not just reactions to particular events or stories, but more structural allegiances
that could be seen as competing and operating in tandem with the official sources of
information. This was supported by a number of other journalists who had contact
with NSW Police Force over and above the NSW PMU:
Almost exclusively my contact with police is with people who are not working in the
media area of the force or the marketing area of the force, theyre people that are
actually doing front-line jobs. And they are a range of people from detectives, to
superintendents that run Local Area Commands in the suburbs, to coppers on the
beat. People that Ive gotten to know one-on-one over the last roughly 10 years, and
know that I can be trusted and for them to talk fairly frankly off the record to me
about things, thats how I get my stories. (Journalist 5)
Moreover, the fostering of these contacts was seen as vital to journalists being able
to carry out their role effectively:
Its really important that you have your own police contacts as a journalist, especially
sources that you dont have to talk to on the record If you want to sort of move to
the next level of journalism, if you want to break stories for instance because the
Media Unit disseminates these stories to everyone so, if you want to actually break
a story or have a new angle on a story, its good to know a police officer thats working
on the job. (Journalist 1)
Beyond this, however, some journalists felt that policies restricting journalist
contact with police were unproductive:
Just because these are the rules the government sets up in terms of dealing with
police, it doesnt mean you have to play by them. You rely on your own contacts. And
thats what I do, I work the edges. Information comes from a variety of sources.
(Journalist 2)
So for the more serious journalists, attempts to manage the ways in which they
conduct business has meant that they have had to adapt their investigative and
research techniques over time. It is little wonder then that, as one ex-PMU staffer
said, the media policy was just a work in progress it was being reviewed all the
time and rewritten.

455
Theory and Discussion: New Political Rationalities

and Cultures of Control
As demonstrated above, Chibnall (1977) gives us the tools to assess the production
of stories at an instrumental level that goes some way to explaining the utility of
PMUs to journalists. However, we believe PMUs demonstrate something of a
broader shift in both governing rationalities and technical capacities. Almost two
decades ago, Grabosky and Wilson were able to suggest that journalists only use
PMUs as a starting point in the construction of news stories (Grabosky & Wilson,
1989, p. 37; Wilson, 1992, p. 171); our data suggests it is now much more than this.
In many cases the PMU story is the news story.
David Garland (1996, 2001) has outlined what he suggested were the new and,
in some cases, contradictory emerging programs of crime control through the 1980s
and 1990s. He termed these the criminologies of everyday life or criminologies of the self
and the criminologies of the other. These, he broadly suggested, were responses to the
crisis in penal modernism and the normalisation of high rates of offending towards
the end of the 20th century. We believe it is possible to theorise the development of
PMUs in relation to the emergence of these programs of crime control.
The criminologies of the everyday life refer to a complex array of responsibilising
and partnership strategies that seek to produce active citizens who govern the self
and that can be governed at a distance. As Garland (1996, p. 452) argues:
Its key phrases are terms such as partnership, inter-agency co-operation, the multiagency approach, activating communities, creating active citizens, help for selfhelp. Its primary concern is to devolve responsibility for crime prevention on to
agencies, organizations and individuals which are quite outside the state and to
persuade them to act appropriately.
Such criminologies are optimised in programs and strategies as diverse as

Neighbourhood Watch and private crime audits. They exemplify inter alia the
move from policing agencies that once served and protected to those, like the
motto of contemporary NSW Police Force, that provide a safer community with
your help (NSW Police Force, 2009). The criminologies of the self suggest
although do not necessarily deliver in practice a noninterventionist, more
limited role for the state as citizens take on the role of crime prevention.
Most significantly for the discussion here, these criminologies require information networks through which inter-alia risks can be communicated, identified and
avoided or guarded against (Ericson & Haggerty, 1997). They require avenues of
risk communication and the production of specific discourses about crime aimed at
actuating these partnerships and self-governing prudential subjects (OMalley,
1992). We see it as no great accident then that PMUs begin to appear historically
at least in their current and more sophisticated form towards the end of the
1980s when strategies of responsibilisation also begin to emerge as a then unrealised
or incomplete governmental program. Community begins to be enlisted in crime
control and prevention when, as Garland (1996, p. 448) puts it:
Modest improvements at the margin, the better management of risks and resources,
reduction of the fear of crime, reduction of criminal justice expenditure and greater
456

support for crimes victims become the less than heroic policy objectives which
increasingly replace the idea of winning a war against crime.
Simultaneously, criminal justice agencies have had to adapt to failure. They adapt
to the notion that these historically high recorded rates of crime are difficult to
shift, that clear up rates are low and workloads are high, and that the community
has lost their trust in the agency. Garland (1996) suggests this ushers in a new set of
managerialist strategies aimed at making organisations more efficient and customer
focused. And while organisations might be managed more like businesses, on a
budget, they are required to adhere to stricter reporting mechanisms and to meet a
new range of key performance indicators (KPIs). This taming of the system again
requires lines of communication for information equally to, from and within the
police organisation and new strategies of bureaucratic management. The public
must be made aware of the successes of policing17 to reduce fear and foster customer
trust and legitimacy.18 As consumers, citizens both provide feedback on satisfaction
with the agency,19 the meeting its KPIs and the like (often defined by the NSW
government in order that they can be met),20 as they are simultaneously the target
of information about success. Government essentially increases its strategic management of the agency through a range of structural and managerialist changes21 while
at the same time expanding criminal justice agencies such as the NSW Police Force
in scope and size. As Ericson and Haggerty (1997, p. 388) put it;
communication technologies also radically alter the structure of police organizations by leveling hierarchies, blurring traditional divisions of labour, dispersing supervisory capacities, and limiting individual discretion. In the process, traditional rank
structures of command and control are displaced by system surveillance mechanisms
for regulating police conduct.
PMUs are demonstrably part of this expansion in managerialist and communicative

technologies, just as they obviously have a role in communicating successes to the
public. As Garland (1996, p. 455) notes: One response to the problem of overload
has been to develop new strategies of system integration and system monitoring,
which seek to implement a level of process and information management which was
previously lacking.
Yet at the same time as these new rationalities of governing crime have developed, and as we have argued as PMUs have developed along with them, we have
seen a ramping up in the punitive rhetoric and actions of governments. There has
been, for example, a continual emphasis on tough on crime credentials (Hogg &
Brown 1998; Weatherburn, 2004). These law and order policies often involve a
cynical manipulation of the symbols of state power and of the emotions of fear and
insecurity which give these symbols their potency (Garland, 1996, pp. 460461).
These are the criminologies of the other. By the criminologies of the other Garland
refers to criminologies that engage in images of the other, the marginalised, the
criminalised, the feared. Emotion is evoked rather than careful analyses. It is a
politicised discourse of the unconscious (see also Douglas, 1992).
Yet these contradictions in crime control provide no great impediment to PMUs
who both enlist citizens as partners in crime control at the same time they
reinforce the tough crime-fighting credentials of the police force. Indeed, they are
both outcomes of these programs and rationalities of crime control and instruments

457
of their proliferation. Conceptualising PMUs in this sense explains debates around

the politicisation of the NSW PMU. It also makes analytical sense in relation to our
interview data.
Perversely, the taming of the system produces new resistances as journalists
(and some police) seek new avenues for information. Overall then, the structure of
police media relationships changes; policing strategies become as much a public
relations exercise as an operational one. High-profile policing exercises can be
publicised through the PMU, risks can be communicated and the citizenry
activated; the good policing story can be narrated to consumers. The observations
made by journalists of control, spin, and propaganda disseminating from within
the NSW PMU are further suggestive of attempts to control information by the unit
(see Feeley & Simon, 1992; Garland, 2001; Lovell, 2003; Jiggins, 2007; Mawby,
2002).
And this contradictory work-in-progress that is the PMU, and its guiding policy,
becomes the vehicle of organisational requirement and political strategy expanding the capacity to frame and define crime and deviance while being subject to
political pressure and quite likely the self-government of its own affairs. Moreover, it
has the complex task of responding to the ever-changing multi-mediated media
environment.
Cavender (2004) among others has criticised Garlands account of the development of cultures of control, suggesting he downplays the medias role in agendasetting and framing the debates through which these new penal strategies emerged.22
By this account the development of PMUs should not be seen as simply being driven
by new political rationalities but also as a response to changing media landscapes,
capacities and indeed media technologies. In this sense, like previous analyses,
Garlands account provides a partial analysis. As we have noted, the new media
landscape has provided opportunities for police public relations units to expand
their activities into a whole range of new domains using creative new media
technologies. Innes (2004) has noted that narratives about crime and PMUs are
now integral into many of these narratives are part of a system of communicative action; thus mediated signals frequently perform a framing function for
individuals in terms of how they interpret and define their co-present encounters
and experiences (2004, p. 351). Inness work highlights the complex relationship
between crime narratives, signal crimes, control signals, and fear and concern
about crime. The expansion of PMUs is thus also illustrative of policing organisations wishing to influence the mass medias tendency to emphasise signal crimes
and to provide narratives of reassurance or otherwise.
Thus, it would be overstating things, however, to suggest that the power
relations between police and the media were all top-down or one-way that the
culture of control is somehow functionally all-pervasive. One of the central
messages to come across in the interviews was the unpredictability and dynamic
nature of the relationship police and journalists had with one another, and the
frequent power struggles that each felt they are faced with in their exchanges.
Foucault has addressed the issue of power relationships extensively in his work,
moving away from notions of power as a repressive force, and instead arguing that
power is productive, producing domains of objects and rituals of truth (Hunt &
458

Wickham, 1994, p. 16), and we use this framework here to assess the production of
resistances to the PMU control of information.
The techniques of control produce actions of resistance that contribute towards
the success (or failure) and progression of systems of control (Foucault, 1982).
Power relationships will often be unstable, ambiguous and reversible as these
examples demonstrate (Hindess, 1996, p. 97, 101).
Thus, attempts at information control on the part of the PMU can often lead
journalists to source their information from unofficial police contacts they have
fostered, cementing these informal and unofficial lines of communication. In line
with Hunt and Wickhams (1994) Foucaultian analysis of attempts at governing, in
many ways the use of the NSW PMU as a tool of governing information flows was
set up to fail, or at least be partial and incomplete. Resistances to the centralisation
of power to produce truth in the NSW PMU are constant and often successful
and not just through the actions of journalists, but also through the actions of some
police who see the PMU as an obstruction. As Foucault commented, discourse is
not simply that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but it is a thing
for which and by which there is struggle (cited in Young, 1981, p. 52).
Concluding Remarks
As Wilson (1992) has previously argued, the power exercised by police can have a
number of negative consequences; the orchestration of what is written and
photographed, the withholding of information from journalists with whom they
have conflict, even the intimidation of journalists. Many journalists we spoke to
conceptualised such attempts at control in the NSW policemedia interface.
As the interviews and content analysis above demonstrate, the NSW PMU
plays a pivotal mediating role in the construction of news regarding both crime and
the NSW Police Force itself. Overreliance upon the NSW PMU as an information
source evokes important questions about journalistic independence at a time when
shareholders in public media corporations are being appeased by editorial staff cuts
and leaner, more productive journalistic staffing arrangements. With print media in
particular in (serious if not terminal) decline, the attractiveness of PMU media
releases and readymade stories cannot be understated from an instrumentalist
perspective. Indeed, in NSW the PMU is increasingly filling an information void in
framing and presenting stories to media organisations in more creative ways.
The danger in this climate is that with a largely compliant and uncritical media,
and the capacity of policing organisations to control much of the flow of information, police organisations have the ability to frame a great percentage of narratives
about law and order and policing. Policing organisations can thus mediate the
landscape upon which crime stories speak themselves.
However, to again draw from Garland, the NSW PMU is constitutive of another
domain through which new political rationalities are deployed to tame the system
and manage both the police organisation and what news is disseminated. This
management is subject to constant negotiation and resistances that renders the
policemedia relationship as one that is in constant flux. Rather than simply being
an extension of existing attempts to manage (cf. Wilson, 1992), we believe the
PMU is demonstrative of a range of new and often contradictory political rationali-

459
ties and cultures of control that are in many ways empirically different to previous
attempts to manage the media although, of course, they are also continuations of
these. Indeed, the NSW PMU has functions well beyond the control of information
to the media. Its surfaces of emergence, as Foucault might characterise it, are
complex and many. Not least of which is that PMUs have a central role in the
dissemination of information about risk and the subsequent activation of citizens.
While Chibnalls news values offer important analytical tools for explaining the
instrumental attraction of PMUs as a source of information, their operation also
needs to be analysed as part of a range of new political rationalities that seek to
control the agenda of crime stories as part of range of strategies of image and risk
management. These intricacies of the policemedia relationship, transformed by the
professionalisation of police media communications, signals the need for a change
in the way we think about and analyse the crime media nexus. It is hoped that this
article contributes to the corpus of scholarship and research that highlights a need
to enlist more sophisticated tools for the analysis of policemedia relationships.
Meanwhile, despite resistance and struggles for the power of representation, we
suggest many journalists are simply cop(ying) it sweet.
Endnotes
1
2
As of December 2009 (NSW Police Force, 2010).

For example, the online edition of the NSW-based The Daily Telegraph (2009) encourages
readers to send in your news, while the Sydney Morning Herald (2009) online edition asks
readers if they have missed anything, urging readers to alert them of any corruption, problems
or issues and to send in photos, videos and tip-offs.
3 In 2008 the Freedom of Information Unit moved into the Public Affairs Branch in a move
aimed at improving the management of freedom of information determinations (NSW Police
Force, 2009). In the same year the NSW Police Force was named by the NSW Ombudsman as
the source of the most FOI complaints due to its increasing rates of refusals on FOI applications, with 55% of all applications refused (Bissett, 2008; NSW Ombudsman, 2008).
4 This policy provides police with guidelines on the release of information to the media . . .
what information can be released, the circumstances that should be considered and the level of
authority necessary for releasing information (NSW Police, 2004, p. 3). The failure of internal
policy such as the Media Policy, that establishes who is permitted to speak with the media, has
recently led to recommendations by the Police Integrity Commission (PIC) to introduce legislation that will lead to the prosecution of police who unofficially speak with the media and
provide them with information (Police Integrity Commission, 2007).
5 It is also part of a broader research project investigating police/media relationships in New
South Wales.
6 From March 1, 2006 until the March 31, 2006.
7 A tabloid publication with an average Monday to Friday circulation of 359, 171 (NewsSpace,
2010).
8 A broadsheet publication with an average Monday to Friday circulation of 211, 006 (Fairfax
Media, 2010).
9 Interviews were semistructured and included a range of common prompts. While staff of the
NSW PMU were contacted and recruited in consultation with the NSW Police Force, journalists were selected on criteria related to their style of, and role in, reporting and their availability.
10 University of Western Sydney ethics protocol approval number HREC 05/062.
460

11 More recently we have been told informally by the director of the NSW PMU that it aims at
10 stories per day.
12 All references to the Daily Telegraph in this article refer to the Sydney-based Murdoch publication and should not be confused with the British newspaper of the same name.
13 It is important to note that not all information disseminated by the NSW PMU is represented
on their website in the form of a media release. Rather, NSW PMU staff have constant
communications with journalists at which point follow-up information may be disseminated
and interviews with relevant police might be organised. Thus, there would be a significant
amount of information our study would not capture. This caveat is clearly illustrated by the
fact that some years ago the NSW PMU released much more in-depth stories on their site.
Currently however, stories are generally only one paragraph in length.
14 The NSW PMU currently runs a Twitter account, as well as hosting advertising videos on
You Tube
15 It is suggested to all NSW Police in the Media Policy that by following it officers will play
your part in building positive public opinion of your work and that of your colleagues (NSW
Police, 2004, p. 4).
16 Interestingly, the NSW Police Force website now hosts a direct link to the Police Ministers
press releases.
17 For example, the NSW PMU webpage proudly displays performance indicators for the Police
Assistance Line, indicating police both responsiveness to the public and bureaucratic
efficiency. These include the average length of time in answering calls, the total number of
calls answered and the percentage of calls answered in 27 seconds or less. The later being a
performance indicator for the grade of service 74% on our most recent viewing (NSW
Police Force, 2010).
18 For example, the Australian Productivity Commission through their SCRGSP (Steering
Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision) (2009) reports on public satisfaction of policing agencies annually.
19 For example ,the latest NSW Police Force Annual Report displays the latest high results from
the National Community Satisfaction with Policing Survey, a key indicator in the delivery of
policing services (NSW Police Force, 2009, p. 28). The results are also followed by a
disclaimer which states that Survey estimates are subject to sample error. Perceptions are
influenced by many factors, not necessarily related to police performance (NSW Police Force,
2009, p. 29).
20 See, for example, the current NSW State Plan (2006).
21 For example, the NSW State Plan features heavily within recent NSW Police Force strategies.
22 Also see Sparks (2000) for a discussion of this.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Professor Mark Findlay, Professor Les Moran, Elaine
Fishwick, Professor Julie Stubbs, and the two anonymous referees for their constructive and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Dr Alyce McGovern
would also like to thank the support of the Charles Sturt University Writing Up
Award Scheme, and the University of Western Sydney Postgraduate Awards.
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Australian & New Zealand Journal of

'Cop[ying] it Sweet': Police Media Units and the Making of News

Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology

>> Version of Record - Dec 1, 2010

Downloaded from anj.sagepub.com by cursuri psihologie on October 11, 2012

Cop[ying] it Sweet: Police Media Units

Behind the Headlines

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

mundane reproduction of police press releases in the mainstream media, as

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

Context: The NSW Police Media Unit

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

Results 1: Media Content Or a Content Media

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

The Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald

Results 2: Making News Today or Media Instrumentalism

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

Taming the System

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

Another put it in terms of this contradiction between risk communication and

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

As one journalist emphasised, you do have to develop independent sources. These

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

Theory and Discussion: New Political Rationalities

Such criminologies are optimised in programs and strategies as diverse as

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

PMUs are demonstrably part of this expansion in managerialist and communicative

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

of their proliferation. Conceptualising PMUs in this sense explains debates around

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

As of December 2009 (NSW Police Force, 2010).

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

POLICE MEDIA UNITS AND THE MAKING OF NEWS

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

ALYCE McGOVERN AND MURRAY LEE

THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

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