The Kumanjayi Walker shooting, the trial that followed and the coronial inquest that followed the trial has hammered home the need to look at trauma in police officers. Was Rolfe motivated by racism, was he used to using excessive force, or was he traumatised? The coronial inquest revealed that he was being medicated for depression.
Police officers often face traumatic situations and witness the trauma of others. As a result, they are known to have elevated rates of PTSD, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions. Due to the work culture, this subject has been quite taboo. In August 2016, A
Four Corners exposé titled Insult to Injury revealed how police officers’ claims for compensation and psychiatric treatment for PTSD were being met with scepticism,
resistance and delays. Perceived stigma, failure to seek help and organisational failures to support help-seeking created high levels of despair that affect families and the community. Insurers are going to extraordinary lengths to avoid making payouts, such as spying on victims and invading their privacy, using both physical and electronic surveillance. For these police officers, the aggressive tactics exacerbated their mental illness, sometimes resulting in suicide.
In the first half of 2022, there were five suicides by current or former Northern Territory Police officers. A Support and Well-being Services review summary stated that there was no strategy for the mental health and wellbeing of police officers, and only limited data reporting on it, and that there was no money for “preventative and responsive” services.
A Beyond Blue survey in 2017-2018 of 21,000 police and emergency service workers across Australia found that employees reported having suicidal thoughts at a rate over
two times higher than the general population and were more than three times as likely to have a suicide plan. It also found that “poor workplace practices and culture were
found to be damaging to mental health and occupational trauma.”
One in 2.5 employees was diagnosed with a mental health condition, compared with one in five in the general population. Four out of 10 former employees experienced symptoms of PTSD, compared with one in 10 current employees, and one in five experienced very
high psychological distress.
More than half of employees reported that they had experienced traumatic events during their work that deeply affected them. Three out of four employees found that the worker’s compensation process made them even more unwell.
A Northern Territory Police Association survey in 2022 found that most police officers were unhappy with leadership, understaffing issues, and pay levels and that they were losing faith in the force.
92.6% of officers did not think there were enough police to do what was being asked of them. 87.9% said they were dissatisfied with the current pay freeze. 61% felt that senior managers did not engage with employees at all levels, while 58% said that recruitment and promotions were not based on merit. 59% said that they did not feel safe to speak up
and challenge the way things were done, and 58% said they did not feel recommendations from staff were fairly considered. 58% said they did not feel any action would be taken because of the survey. Northern Territory Police Association president McCue said the results showed the police force was in “complete crisis” and morale was at an all-time low. He mentioned the impact of the Kumanjayi Walker shooting.
When we look at our shared story of trauma: the harm caused by (juvenile) detention; trauma and neurolaw; offenders’ intergenerational trauma; adverse childhood experiences in offenders; victim trauma; vicarious and other trauma in lawyers, police officers and prison workers; and trauma-induced disability in offenders – we also see that NGOs and government organisations do not sufficiently reach the offenders.
Anyone who has worked for NGOs and other organisations in Alice Springs knows how hopelessly siloed they often are. They often do not reach the most vulnerable and transient.
This, in combination with the waxing and waning of political approaches to the problem, makes that sustainable solutions have not been found.
There is only one answer to this problem: substantial investment in sustainable justice. This means seeing crime in Alice Springs as a public-health issue that needs public-health responses, under one roof, in an establishment that is the opposite of a prison. I have
referred to this as a “Nosirp” until we find a better word for it. Sustainable solutions are expensive. It is impossible to know how expensive such an establishment would be.
But we should measure its projected cost against the total cost of crime in Alice Springs, as I have calculated.
The Ny Anstalt facility in Nuuk, Greenland, built between 2013-2017, cost AUS$52,381,385 to build and costs AUS$231,869 per prisoner per year to run.
It is very simple: if we do not make a similar investment in the futures of the children in our wider community, and the futures of our police, lawyers, magistrates, judges, and prison workers and their families…crime in Alice Springs is here to stay.
In light of the enormity of the problem described above, putting a small private army with dogs on the streets, as recently suggested in the council, seems a very questionable, short-term solution. In my view, it should be avoided at any cost.
Image: ABC News
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