Case Study: Victoria, Australia

The Victoria Police were the first department to introduce an EI system in Australia. The project was part of a major restructure of integrity management at a time when the department had an adverse reputation associated with a variety of recurring corruption and abuse scandals (Prenzler, 2014b). Although the new system was limited to citizen complaints it was highly innovative at the time in the context of a traditional and reactive approach to complaints across Australian policing. Of particular value, unique amongst intervention studies, was the inclusion of a program that profiled units of police administration. The study is also unique in including a financial cost-benefit assessment of the system. Another unique feature was the use of trends in complaint rates before and after intervention, contrary to the common use of complaint averages. The evaluation identified large reductions in complaints against both profiled officers and units, and showed large reductions in costs associated with processing complaints. Of additional note was the fact that complaints amongst profiled individuals and locations were trending upwards pre-intervention and trended downwards over the term of the post-intervention period.