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Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society by Janet B. L. Chan. Cambridge & Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 255 pp. $59.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-52156420-4.
Janet Chan's focused, tightly written study is among the best published evaluations of "community policing" (CP) in the AngloAmerican world. A solid methodology combines questionnaires (N=590, response rate at 56%), material from a stratified random sample of police (oversampled in areas with large ethnic populations), semistructured interviews (N=41; 10 Asians), and content analysis of documents and news clippings. Done in 1991-92 among the New South Wales (NSW) Police-the largest in Australia (13,000 officers)-this is a sophisticated analysis of the NSW government's failed attempts to reduce police violence and corruption and increase responsivity to minorities.
Change and obdurate resistance struggle here. The book discusses policing in a multicultural society, discrimination in policing, policy strategies for producing change, and police culture. More that 10 years of corruption in the lower ranks (in complicity with middle management) and violence, both of which erupted in public scandals, punctuates the NSW drama. Chan charts the course of reform, including a powerful chapter on a 1992 televised documentary, "Cop it Sweet," and responses to it. This film, showing beatings of aboriginals, symbolized for the public the failure of reform.
The reform espoused a community...