Rural Crime - NSW Police Force 1.39

SPOKESPERSON'S MESSAGE

Rural Crime is defined as 'Crime pertaining to the pastoral and agricultural industries.'

The farming sector contributes 12.1% of Australia's Gross Domestic Product or $72 billion in an average year. Australian agriculture is strongly export oriented, and returned about $26 billion to the economy in 2006/2007.

Agriculture is the biggest land user in NSW, with an estimated 63.6 million hectares or 79% of the land mass used for agricultural activity. In 'normal' production seasons, NSW farmers typically have the highest value of agricultural production of any State.

This reflects the real importance of the rural industries to the national export market and the economy.

Research by the University of New England's Institute for Rural Futures found that 74% of producers in NSW reported experiencing some type of property crime. The 2002/03 National Farm Survey conservatively estimated that the total loss to farms as a result of crime was $70 million. Most disturbing was the result that less than 50% of producers report crime to police for a variety of reasons including their opinion of what police are able to achieve.

The introduction of the 33 Rural Crime Investigators in 2002 is designed to provide the rural community with a significant improvement in specialised rural crime reduction and detection. This applies not only to the community's perception of what police are able to achieve, but more importantly what police actually do achieve by their investigative actions to arrest rural criminals.

The Rural Crime Investigators have a business plan that has six main areas of focus. These are:

The professional investigation of rural crime;
Collecting rural crime intelligence;
Providing a multi agency approach to detect and prevent rural crime;
Monitoring transported stock, sale yards, abattoirs, Wool Hide & Skin dealers, rural clearing sales and Stock & Station Agents;
Educating other operational police on rural issues;
Providing the rural community with effective crime prevention strategies.
By raising the focus of rural crime within the NSW Police Force and the rural community of NSW, Police will be in an improved position to meet the corporate objectives of ethical crime reduction. This will provide the rural community of this State with greater confidence in the ability of Police to understand and combat what is an insidious crime that effects not the only the production ability of individual producers but the production ability of the country. Importantly is has the potential to threaten Australia's quarantine status which depends on the integrity of regulation systems and the ability to efficiently respond to such incidents (AQIS 2007).

I commend to you this Knowledge Map and the 33 Rural Crime Investigators and encourage all rural Police to raise their level of awareness and knowledge of rural crime issues.

Assistant Commissioner Peter Gallagher, APM
Commander, Western Region
Corporate Spokesperson for Rural Crime