2024 Liberty Lecture: Police Accountability, Legitimacy and Trust in Uncertain Times

Professor Andrew Goldsmith will deliver the the School of Law's annual Liberty Lecture on the topic 'Police Accountability, Legitimacy and Trust in Uncertain Times'.

Abstract

The lecture will provide a perspective on the changing landscape of police accountability over the last 50 years and ongoing challenges to public trust in police.

I shall begin with the impact of police corruption cases in the 1970s and 1980s upon efforts to establish civilian oversight mechanisms, then turn to the rising tide of policing-related technology through the 1990s and 2000s, and how it has contributed to greater visibility of policing and reduced confidence in policing in some quarters of the community.

I will also reflect briefly on attempts by Western police experts to export their ideas for accountability and police practice to the Global South.

I will argue that today, the police in many Western jurisdictions are operating under conditions of extreme vulnerability.

Public trust in police and traditional forms of police accountability is threatened by changes in the social media landscape and the digital ecosystem as well as changes in society, culture and politics. 

These changes affect their operational priorities and effectiveness and degrade their public standing and legitimacy.

To conclude, I will offer a few thoughts on how we could achieve greater police accountability and legitimacy.

The analytical focus will draw mainly upon comparisons from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA.

About the speaker

Andrew Goldsmith is Emeritus Professor at the College of Business, Government and Law at Flinders University.

He originally trained as a lawyer and spent nearly three years in legal practice before undertaking postgraduate studies in law, criminology and social theory in the United Kingdom and Canada.

His first teaching position was at Warwick University where he taught criminal law and criminology. He then moved to Brunel University, London, and then to Monash University.

In 1997, Professor Goldsmith joined Flinders University for the first time as Foundation Professor of Legal Studies.

Between 2009 and 2012, he held the position of Executive Director, Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, University of Wollongong before re-joining Flinders in his current position.

Professor Goldsmith currently co-edits the ANZ Journal of Criminology and undertakes research in organised crime, policing, cybercrime and corruption.

In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and appointed a Matthew Flinders Distinguished professor by Flinders University.

How to attend

This is a free event, though registration is required in advance via Tickettailor.