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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2226 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (5.07): I want to make a few comments in this area. First of all, I think it was timely and appropriate that additional police be provided in the ACT. I emphasise that it is not necessarily an absolute increase of 18 police; it is an increase of 18 police who are actually available on the beat. Some of those are police being transferred from other jobs because they are being freed from those jobs by the creation of additional resources in other areas. For example, the requirement for police to look after cells and court duty will be removed. That duty will be given to somebody else and the police will then be free to get out on the streets of Canberra. There are lots of criminals, for example, in the precincts of the court, but not a lot of crime, at least as far as I am aware; so it is good that there is a move into the areas where crime can be tackled directly. Mr Osborne has complimented me on the creation of additional police and I thank him for that.

I think it is worth picking up the point which Mr Wood made - that it is a double-edged sword to have additional police on the beat. This was underscored by an exercise a couple of years ago in Civic where, as a result of concerns about problems in Civic, we had a number of police there. The police got out there and followed through, using the new team-based approach, to pursue a number of elements of crime that were taking place on the Civic pavements, so to speak. They included things like drug dealing, assaults and other things happening at night. That exercise was quite intensive and quite a few police were placed in that area.

The result was not a diminution in the level of crime; it was quite the contrary. There was a very sharp increase in the level of crime. The reason, I suspect, was that offences were being picked up that previously had not been picked up - "victimless offences", if you like. A drug deal, for example, that might not have been detected before because the police were not there, was picked up by the police and that resulted in another crime being recorded which was not previously being recorded. Thus the figures were going up.

Mr Moore: It is about records of crime, not about crime itself.

MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed. Mr Moore has picked up the point that we need to be looking at the way in which crime is recorded and we have to know how to interpret the figures to get the true picture of what is going on. Very shortly, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I will be tabling the first of a series of quarterly reports which will be published and which will tell us what is going on in these areas and help us to refine a better picture of what is occurring in our city and where to look to find answers to problems. I think that will fit in with the thrust of what Mr Wood is proposing in the way of this inquiry into juvenile crime. At least it will help with the information available in the public domain.

The other way in which crime rose was by police following through on particular criminal activities and tracing people who were committing crimes to other areas where they discovered other offences being committed. For example, rather than arresting drug dealers, in some cases they followed the drug dealers to other places where they found stolen goods rackets under way. They apprehended a number of other people and again more crimes were recorded as having been committed. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker,

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