Police independent oversight in Australia and New Zealand

The purpose of this article is to describe the system of independent oversight of policing organizations in Australia and New Zealand to discuss the effectiveness and accountability of those organizations. After defining what is meant by independent oversight and its importance to democratic policing systems, it covers the background and history of these bodies. Information was obtained from desk research examining publicly available documents such as annual reports and other published sources; also practitioners from independent oversight bodies were interviewed from four out of the possible nine organizations. Analysis of the information revealed a wide variety of scope, capability and functions within the bodies researched which indicated there was no commonality of constitution or investigation operating procedures although there was considerable development of the oversight function in the last fifty years. Many organizational developments were noted and the general movement towards crosspublic sector integrity commissions.