Police officers' and legal professionals' perceptions regarding how children are, and should be, questioned about repeated abuse

This study explored the perceptions of police officers and legal professionals (i.e., prosecutors, defence lawyers and a judge) about (a) what particularisation is, (b) the type of information that is required for particularisation to occur, and (c) how particularisation is best achieved in cases of repeated child abuse. The professionals' perceptions (all experts in this area) were elicited via individual in-depth semi-structured interviews. While all participants acknowledged the importance of particularisation, the views of the police officers varied in several important ways to those of the other professionals. Overall, the police officers perceived that highly specific details (such as the location, date and time of the offence) are essential for particularisation to occur, and that maximising the number of separate offences and specific details about each offence increases the chance of successful prosecution. In contrast, the legal professionals perceived that the primacy goal of the police officers should be to elicit a free-narrative account of one or more offences. A high proportion of specific questions was perceived to negatively impact on the child's credibility by contaminating the evidence. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Predictors of wellbeing experienced by Australian police officers

The aim of this study was to assess the ability of the Demand-Control-Support (DCS) model as well as the psychological contract model (PCM) to predict the wellbeing experienced by 2,566 Australian police officers. While the level of explained variance attributed to the PCM was substantially less than the DCS, measures of contract breach and organisational fairness still captured significant portions of intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction. Overall, the results of this study suggest that both the DCS and the PCM should figure prominently in strategies aimed at reducing or preventing police stress.

What makes a good investigative interviewer of children? A comparison of police officers' and experts; perceptions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine police officers’ perceptions about their role in interviewing children, and to compare these perceptions with those of child eyewitness memory experts.

Design/methodology/approach – A diverse sample of 23 police officers (from three states of Australia) individually participated in in-depth interviews where they were asked to define what makes a good interviewer in the area of child abuse investigation.

Findings – Irrespective of the background of the officers, the important role of interviewers’ personal attributes was emphasised (e.g. having a relaxed, empathetic, warm nature). Such personal attributes were more prominent in the participants’ descriptions than knowledge of legislation and children’s
development, prior job experience, and interviewing techniques.

Research limitations/implications – The paper shows that while child eyewitness memory experts acknowledge the importance of establishing a bond of mutual trust between the interviewer and the child, the importance of utilising an open-ended questioning style for enhancing rapport, and
for eliciting a detailed and accurate account of abuse cannot be overstated. The possible reasons for the police officers’ emphasis on personal qualities are discussed.

Originality/value – This paper has revealed that limitations in the competency of police officers in interviewing children is not merely a problem of “doing” (i.e. learning to ask open-ended questions),
but may also reflect ingrained attitudinal and organisational barriers.

What criteria do police officers use to measure the success of an interview with a child?

This study used a mixed-methods approach to explore the perceptions of a heterogeneous sample of 75 police interviewers regarding their performance in a mock interview with a 5-7-year-old child. Each officer recruited for this study was authorised to conduct investigative interviews with children. Specifically, we explored how the officers' perception of what makes a good interview differs depending on their background experience and their (perceived and actual) ability to adhere to best-practice interview guidelines. Overall, the officers' perceptions of what constitutes an effective interview were not entirely consistent with those held by experts in forensic interviewing. The majority of the interviewers perceived that the locus of control in the interview rested primarily with the child and/or the environmental setting. In contrast, experts tend to place the central onus of responsibility for the outcome of an interview on the skill of the interviewer in using open-ended questions. Several possible explanations for, and the implications of, these findings are discussed.

Roles, responsibilities and futures of chief information officers (CIOs) in the public sector

This paper discusses in its entirety, the CIO (Chief Information Officer) position in the public sector. Governments are increasingly adopting Information Technology for internal processes and for the delivery of service to their citizens. It includes literature on CIO roles and responsibilities which is heavily based on the private sector, due to the recognition of the role in this sector over twenty years. The position is just evolving in the public sector, and due to the context in which the public sector operates there are some similarities as well as vast differences. An evaluation of existing CIO models and theories form the basis for research on CIO roles, responsibilities and future within the public sector.

An urgent challenge: new training opportunities for junior medical officers

There will be a massive increase in the number of medical school graduates over the next 5–10 years — there were 1287 Australian resident graduates in 2004, and there will be more than 3000 by the middle of the next decade.

A workshop held during the 11th National Prevocational Medical Education Forum explored ways to provide the additional prevocational training posts that will be required.

Four possible sites for additional training posts were discussed:
         • expansion of public hospital training posts;
         • general practice;
         • private hospitals; and
         • other sites, including private rooms and community placements.

Current accreditation procedures will need to be amended to accommodate more interns.

There will be limited access to prevocational training posts for non-resident (full-fee-paying) graduates and international medical graduates.

There is an urgent need for postgraduate medical councils, state health departments, the federal government, and medical boards to work together to identify, develop and accredit new training posts.

A qualitative examination of police officers' questioning of children about repeated events

For an offender to be convicted in relation to repeated child abuse, most jurisdictions require that each separate act be identified with reasonable precision with reference to time, place, or some other unique contextual detail (S v. R, 1989). The current study provided a qualitative examination of the way in which police officers assist children to identify and distinguish between occurrences of a repeated event. Field, as well as mock interviews (about an innocuous staged event) were examined, with child witnesses' ages ranging from 3 to 16 years. Overall, several problems in the questioning were highlighted. These included: over-reliance on specific questions, use of 'labels' for occurrences without inquiring as to whether these were unique, and frequent shifting of the focus between occurrences. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Housing service officers : agents of the state or customer service officers?

Staff employed in the Victorian Office of Housing are invariably required to exercise discretion in their day-to-day work managing housing assets and providing services to public housing tenants. Policies specify processes but they never cover all situations and do not provide guidance on competing objectives. For example, preparing a property for reletting is a process with protocols and budget constraints. However, staff can make procedural variations that compy with policy. These variations, generally learnt from peers on the job, often result in budget over runs, but do result in improved properties for new tenants. Discretion is being exercised in balancing housing asset, budget control and tenant service objectives. A housing officer sums up the enduring tension in balancing objectives in the question and statement:’ Am I an agent of the state or a customer service officer? Because I can’t be both’. Organisationally these tensions are spoken about as ‘management issues’, ‘policy reengineering’ and ‘unrealistic understandings’. Using data from an ethnographic study in the Victorian Office of Housing, the paper addresses the question: ‘What do we know about the way in which front line housing officers manage competing objectives in their daily work and how might this knowledge be usefully used in the development of operational policy?’ The paper will explore the way in which complex administrative rules are used as a device to align staff to the Office of Housing objectives and limit the exercise of discretion by frontline staff. Against the background of this analysis the paper will consider the limitations of rule making and the extent to which other organisational strategies might be important for improvements in service provision in a context of constrained resources and limited resources.

The relationship between job status, interviewing experience, gender, and police officers' adherence to open-ended questions

Purpose : The current study examined whether several factors related to the job and demographic profile of police officers are associated with adherence to best-practice guidelines when interviewing children.

Method : One hundred and seventy-eight police officers completed a standardized (simulated) interview regarding an allegation of abuse by a 5-year-old child. Immediately prior to this interview, details were obtained from the officers' regarding their job status, gender, interview experience, the timing and nature of prior training/supervision, and experience outside the policing profession with young children.

Results : The results showed that timing of training was the only factor that related to interview performance. The proportion of open-ended questions among participants who completed their interviewer training course less than 1 month prior to the simulated interview was better than those who completed the training earlier. Interestingly, the performance of the latter group was identical to that of a group of participants who had not yet received any formal interview training. The implications of the findings are discussed, along with directions for future research.

Improving the competency of police officers in conducting investigative interviews with children

Despite the provision of 'best-practice' guidelines regarding conducting interviews with children, research indicates that most investigative interviews do not adhere to these guidelines. To date, there has been little discussion in the literature of the conditions that are needed to promote and sustain expertise in forensic interviewing. The current paper addresses this limitation by describing the main factors preventing the adoption of 'best-practice' interview guidelines. A description of these barriers (and the literature that supports them) forms the basis for the review component of this paper as well as the subsequent recommendations for change.

An examination of police officers' notes of interviews with alleged child abuse victims

This study provided a critical examination of handwritten records (notes) of interviews contained in a sample of 89 police case files about alleged child abuse. Some of the notes examined related to initial disclosure (complaint) interviews which were not electronically recorded and were meant to be recorded verbatim. Notes of electronically recorded interviews, which merely constituted a convenient summary of the case details, were also examined. Collectively, the analyses focused on the accessibility, completeness and accuracy of the notes, and the degree to which the interviewers' questions and witnesses' answers were differentiated. In relation to the disclosure interviews, a substantial proportion of these were not accessible. Of those where the notes were obtained, the detail recorded was not a complete record of conversation, and there was often poor delineation of questions and responses. Analysis of the electronically recorded interviews showed that these were not an entirely accurate summary of event details even though the note takers' sole task was to document the interview. The implications of these findings are discussed.

In her own right : women officers and equality in the Salvation Army

The nature of women's equality in the Army, during the 19th century, was unprecedented, and even today women can rise to positions of power and authority not easily equalled in the community. In the 20th century the principle of equality remained the same, but the practice did not. Any major turnaround in women's officership will require an orientation to first identifying and understanding the forces that effect women's advancement in the Army, plus the introduction of fairly exact and regulated remedial measures.

Police officers' questioning of children about repeated abuse

This thesis examined the perceptions of police and legal professionals regarding how police officers should and do interview children about repeated abuse. It also examined the actual performance of police interviewers in mock and field interviews to understand the reason for interviewer's difficulties and how interview strategy can be improved. The portfolio examines and discusses the complexities associated with assessing the risk of sexual recidivism among different sex offender populations - adult sex offenders, sex offenders with an intellectual disability, adolescent sex offenders and indigenous sex offenders. Four case studies are presented.