The New South Wales police force has rushed to dump a decades-old policy on “highly intrusive” proactive policing of children after a watchdog warned the strategy was potentially unlawful.
The move comes after a five-year investigation by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), which found the NSW police’s use of the suspect targeting management plan (STMP) was having an “ongoing discriminatory effect” on young people.
After seeing a draft of the LECC’s scathing report – the final version of which was released on Monday – the police force said it had stopped using the scheme for people under 18 last week.
The LECC decided against making a “formal finding against the NSW police force” following that decision, but noted some evidence suggested the policy’s use “could possibly meet the threshold for serious misconduct” in some cases.
“The commission also encountered police records that suggested some STMP policing actions may have been unlawful,” the commission found.
The STMP policy was designed to prevent crime before it occurs by encouraging proactive policing strategies, including consistently monitoring targets in the community, subjecting them to searches and visiting them at their homes.
Targets were identified by intelligence officers using an internal IT system to find people who had recently been offending, or who might be at risk of offending.
The LECC found the plan was unreasonably “intrusive and disruptive” to young people’s day-to-day lives, and there was a consistent overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people as targets.
“The STMP target selection process likely contributed to the gross overrepresentation of young Aboriginal STMP targets,” the LECC found.
“This was unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and may have been improperly discriminatory in its effect.”
The LECC’s chief commissioner, Peter Johnson, said it was “important for police to act lawfully and in line with the established legal framework”.
“This is an important opportunity to remedy the concerns of the past,” he said.
“We look forward to working with the police force as it develops a new approach to responding to young people who are engaged in, or at risk of, offending.”
The LECC first began investigating the policy in 2018, and handed police an interim report and a number of recommendations in late 2020.
“Disappointingly … the second stage of our investigation found that little had changed,” the report read.
“We found considerable confusion about what powers police relied upon when undertaking STMP policing activities.
“Police records lacked detail about the legal basis for some interactions, and we found some records that suggested interactions were, or may have been unlawful, because officers had acted beyond their statutory powers.”
Despite the changes, the proportion of Aboriginal young people targeted under the program continued to be “extremely high”.
“The NSW Police Force did not appear to have any practical strategies for addressing this,” the LECC found.
A NSW police spokesperson said the force “is committed to continuous improvement and has worked collaboratively with LECC during the process over a number of years”.
The spokesperson said an “enhanced process” was being developed and the adult program would continue until further notice.
The Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT’s chief executive, Karly Warner, described the report as “damning” and called on police to work with peak bodies as it developed a new strategy.
“We knew the STMP was disproportionately harming Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people,” she said.
“Abolition of the STMP was the only appropriate response. Surveillance and harassment of young people is not the answer.”
The Greens’ justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said the policy should never have been applied to young people.
“The fact that this was ever used on people under 18 is abhorrent and it is a welcome decision for this program to be ceased for young people,” she said.
“The trauma this program has inflicted on people and communities has been immense – these people should now have the opportunity to seek redress from the NSW police.”
