Law enforcement in Australia
Encyclopedia : L : LA : LAW : Law enforcement in Australia
Law enforcement in Australia is served by police, sheriffs and bailiffs under the control of state, territory and the Federal governments. A number of state, territory and federal agencies also administer a wide variety of legislation related to white-collar crime. Police are responsible for the criminal law. The sheriff and bailiffs in each state and territory are responsible for the enforcement of the judgments of the courts exercising civil law (common law) jurisdictions.
Commonwealth law enforcement agencies
- Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, (ACCC)
- Australian Crime Commission, (ACC)
- Australian Customs Service, (ACS)
- Australian Federal Police, (AFP)
- Australian Securities and Investments Commission, (ASIC)
State policing agencies
Each state has its own police service, as does the Northern Territory. However, the Australian Capital Territory Police are under the jurisdiction of the Australian Federal Police.- New South Wales Police
- Northern Territory Police
- Queensland Police
- South Australia Police
- Tasmania Police
- Victoria Police
- Western Australia Police
Police
In Australia there are two levels of police forces, the state police and the Australian Federal Police. The AFP is only 25 years old whilst State Police Forces were established in the 1800's and represent the more traditional policing roles.
Each State as well as the Northern Territory is responsible for maintaining its own police force which is responsible for policing at the state and local level. This involves general law and order, traffic policing, major crime, anti-terrorism branches, water police, search and rescue and in some states transit police. Local policing in the Australian Capital Territory, Jervis Bay Territory and Australia's external territories is contracted to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
In some states, local governments employ by-laws officers or rangers to enforce local by-laws or ordinances relating to such matters as parking, dog ownership, retailing, littering or water usage. These local government officers are not considered to be police forces as they generally only have the power to issue fines and do not have the same powers as state police. They may rely upon appointment as a Special Constable or legislated powers for their authority.
The Australian Federal Police operates at a Federal level and concerns itself with Federal laws including corporate law, drug smuggling, money laundering, human trafficking, e-crime and anti-terrorism. Australian Federal Police Officers also serve on international peacekeeping and policing operations in such places as Cyprus, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Other Federal Agencies are also responsible for specific areas of law enforcement. These include the Australian Crime Commission, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Customs Service.
State sheriffs
In recent years the states and territories have been returning responsibility for the recovering of court ordered fines to their sheriffs responsibility. In practice, the police often carry out the functions of sheriffs and bailiffs in the country and more sparsely populated areas of Australia.National policing initiatives
The Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) is a national policing initiaitve to combat high tech crimes, including crimes committed with or against computers or communication systems (computer crime) like malicious hacking, and traditional crimes which are largely facilitated by technology like child pornography and money laundering.Crime Stoppers programs run in each state and nationally. Crime Stoppers collects information about crime and passes it on to the police ensuring that the community can participate in crime fighting.
CrimTrac is an intergovernmental policing agency that supports Australian policing through the provision of forensic and other information and investigative tools between State and Federal Police Departments. The National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) is national fingerprint database, administered by CrimTrac.
See also
References
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.