Table of Contents
Set against a background of significant levels of crime, violence, and conflict, concerns about ‘law and order’ have become prominent in public debate and private reflection throughout Papua New Guinea. ‘Law and order’ is a capacious term that relates to threats to personal and societal security, as well as to institutions, mechanisms and processes aimed at preventing or controlling these threats. In a country noted for its acute socio-linguistic diversity and limited sense of shared identity, discussion about ‘law and order’ has become a genuinely ‘national’ discourse. Whether in the rural village, urban settlement, suburban home, or government office — everyone has an opinion about ‘law and order’.
Beyond this broad agreement, however, there lies a bewildering array of views about the nature of these problems, their perceived causes and impacts, and how they can be effectively addressed. These perceptions vary between different individuals and groups, as well as along lines of gender, class, and location. For women in many parts of the country, the main issue is that of personal security and freedom of movement, including the threat of family and sexual violence from intimates and strangers alike. Members of the business community voice their concerns in terms of the risk of theft, robbery, fraud, bribery, corruption, and the interruption of commercial operations, as well as the attendant costs of private security and insurance premiums. For many living in the towns and cities, it is the spectre of raskolism or violent street crime that poses the most persistent source of insecurity. In parts of the Highlands Region, it may be the threat of inter-group conflict or tribal fighting that poses the most pressing concern. For criminal justice professionals, it is the apparent impotence of the state’s principal instruments of crime control — the police, courts and prisons. For political leaders and international donors, Papua New Guinea’s law and order problems tend to be conceived primarily in development terms, as major obstacles in the way of much-needed foreign investment and the prospect of economic growth. More recently, concerns about transnational crime and ‘terrorism’ have been added to the discursive mix; these derive, in large part, from new global and regional security discourses that have emerged in the aftermath of the dramatic attacks against the United States in September 2001 and the ascendancy of the Washington led ‘war on terror’.
Viewed from a criminological perspective, there are complex historical and structural factors that have contributed to Papua New Guinea’s fragile internal security. These include high population growth unmatched by economic development, growing levels of poverty and social exclusion, corruption and poor governance, deteriorating infrastructure and government services, pressures on land, internal migration and urbanization, uneven patterns of development, and the high levels of social dislocation accompanying Papua New Guinea’s difficult integration into the global economy. Combined with the fragility and limited reach of state controls, and the erosion of traditional structures in many areas, these factors make for a fertile setting for dispute, conflict and criminality.
Although regularly acknowledging the deeper sources of conflict and lawlessness, the law and order policy responses of successive post-independence governments in Papua New Guinea have typically comprised crime control measures. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Papua New Guinea’s political leaders have often resorted to short-term fixes reliant on relatively high profile (and expensive) control strategies, such as curfews and special policing operations, and, of course, increased penalties for offenders.
Despite the tough ‘law and order’ rhetoric, the actual implementation of announced policies and special measures has been regularly thwarted by lack of adequate resources and capacity on the part of government and its relevant agencies. This capacity deficit has become increasingly evident over the past thirty years, with state controls progressively overwhelmed by their internal weaknesses and the sheer scale of demands placed upon them. In light of the shortcomings of key agencies like the police, substantial levels of donor assistance, primarily from Australia, have been provided to Papua New Guinea. This, in turn, has made donor assistance an important factor in the shaping and implementation of policy in this area.
While few would deny the many institutional deficiencies in the workings of police, courts and prisons in Papua New Guinea, and the need to address them, it is important to understand these issues in the broader context of the relatively short history of modern criminal justice in Papua New Guinea and the enormously challenging and diverse social environment in which it operates. Expectations of the criminal justice system, particularly the police, have been unrealistically high. These agencies have been expected to deal with the complex fallout from broader processes of social and economic change over which they have little control but are nevertheless regularly blamed when levels of lawlessness and disorder increase.
The relatively weak presence of the state in parts of the country means that access to modern justice is severely restricted for many citizens. This situation has worsened in line with the overall deterioration in government services in recent years. State institutions, including police and courts, remain predominantly urban-based, while approximately 85 per cent of the population lives in poorly serviced rural areas. From the vantage point of the ordinary villager, accessing the nearest police post, magistrate, or, indeed, telephone, might involve a lengthy and difficult journey by foot, truck, or canoe. In such cases, reliance for everyday security needs is more likely to be placed on available community-based structures and local kinship associations than on the formal law enforcement system. Likewise, the only option for addressing outstanding grievances may be resort to informal mechanisms of dispute resolution involving village leaders and elders rather than formal courts. The effectiveness of such mechanisms varies significantly. In some places, they may work reasonably well. In others, they are susceptible to capture by bigmen and other local elites and have been used to reinforce the subordinate position of more vulnerable groups, such as women or youth. Just as the capacity of the state has declined, so too has that of many ‘traditional’ and community-based approaches to the prevention and management of conflict.
The issue of whether, and how, to engage with the plurality of social control traditions and practices found in Papua New Guinea is another recurrent theme in discussions about law and order, as in other parts of the island Pacific. In its comprehensive review in 1984, the Clifford Report identified two basic ways in which the phrase ‘law and order’ has been used in Papua New Guinea. The first of these is a notion of peace and order as a state of affairs generated and maintained within a given community without any state participation (Clifford et al. 1984, 6). It is an aspiration of ordinary people who view it as essential to their fundamental wellbeing. This meaning, according to Clifford et al., is the ‘traditional’ view of law and order in societies, as was the case in Papua New Guinea, which existed in the absence of any state. It is contrasted with a second meaning that vests the state with the dominant role in the maintenance of law and order. This is the state-centred view that provides the rationale for the elaborate systems of justice and law enforcement that exist in modern nation-states. More than thirty years after Papua New Guinea’s independence, the inherent tension between these two competing philosophies of ‘law and order’ remains extant.
This chapter provides an overview of law and order policy in Papua New Guinea in the thirty years following independence (1975–2005). The aim is to identify broad patterns in policy thinking about law and order rather than provide an exhaustive account. This includes an attempt to differentiate, where possible, between policy intent and actual practice — what was implemented and what was not. After a short historical introduction to the law and order (now called law and justice) sector and its larger operating environment, the pattern of policy making and, in particular, the crisis-management approach that was adopted during the first twenty years after independence is examined. There follows an account of some important, and more hopeful, developments that have taken place over the last decade, notably the relative stability achieved through the adoption of the 2000 national law and justice sector policy, the gradual move towards a sector-wide approach, and the accompanying adjustments in donor involvement with the sector. The longer history of Australian development assistance to the law and justice sector is then examined in more detail prior to some concluding remarks.
Popular accounts of Papua New Guinea’s deteriorating law and order situation often give the impression that this is a recent phenomenon and is, moreover, largely the result of the mismanagement and personal shortcomings of incompetent and corrupt agency officials and political leaders. While the decline in recent times has been noticeable, and while incompetence and corruption have contributed, the real story is, as one might expect, somewhat more complicated. As Morauta (1986, 8) has pointed out, ‘the seeds of today’s social and institutional problems were sown well before 1975’.
The modern criminal justice system, like the modern state of which it is an integral part, has had a relatively short history in Papua New Guinea. Throughout most of the colonial period, there was no discrete system of criminal justice for local people. Instead, the policing, judicial, and penal powers of government formed part of an undifferentiated system of ‘native administration’ embodied in a set of paternalistic ‘native regulations’ that was aimed primarily at maintaining stability and a semblance of order among colonial subjects rather than delivering justice. This system was personified in the office of the patrol officer or kiap, who acted simultaneously as government agent, police officer, prosecutor, magistrate, and gaoler. The primary role of the ‘native constabulary’ (the forerunner of the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC)) was the extension of government control and only secondarily the control of crime. Given the limited aims and capacities of colonial administration, most Papua New Guineans continued to rely on customary or traditional means for the resolution of all but the most serious local disputes and for the provision of personal and community security.
This was to change gradually with the process of institutional modernization — or ‘state-building’ in today’s parlance — that commenced in the 1950s and picked up pace in the 1960s. While kiap justice was a pragmatic strategy for the gradual expansion of administrative influence, it was considered inappropriate for the long-term governance of the Territory. Paul Hasluck, the long-serving and reform-minded Australian minister for Territories (1951–63), was intent on building a system of justice consistent with what he saw as the future political needs of the Territory. Replacing the old colonial model with a centralized justice system administering a uniform body of law was viewed as a necessary condition for the self-government that would one day follow. The adoption of an Anglo-Australian system of law and justice was proposed in a major review of judicial administration, the so-called Derham Report (Derham 1960). This report became the blueprint for the system of law enforcement and judicial administration that Papua New Guinea inherited at independence in 1975.
An early priority was to establish a separation of powers between judicial, administrative, and executive arms of government. This meant supplanting the administrative model of colonial order with an independent, institutionally differentiated and professionally staffed justice system. A separate Prisons Branch was established in 1957 under the Corrective Institutions Ordinance. The police force was separated from the Department of Native Affairs in 1961 and in 1966 it was removed from the control of the Public Services Commission in order to ensure its neutrality. Mobile squads were established after the police reorganization in 1966 and were used in response to a revival of tribal conflict in the highlands, as well as growing anti-government protests in a number of areas. The transition from the old colonial style of policing to a professional and independent constabulary was a difficult one and, in some respects, remains a work in progress.
The system of courts also underwent significant changes from the mid 1960s, with the introduction of more formal court procedures applicable to both indigenes and foreigners. Local and district courts were established in 1963 and connected through appeal to the superior courts. Most of the old ‘native regulations’ were repealed in 1968, and the new inferior courts were mandated to administer summary offences codified in modern criminal statutes modelled on Australian legislation. Provision was made for training Papua New Guinean magistrates at the Administrative College established in Port Moresby in 1964. Indictable offences continued to be provided for under an outdated version of the Criminal Code of Queensland.
By 1975, Papua New Guinea had acquired the institutional framework of a modern Anglo-Australian justice system. However, these institutions and their operations remained unfamiliar to many Papua New Guineans. The emphasis on due process, individual responsibility, and punishment rather than restitution, caused confusion in many rural areas where they often clashed with local perceptions about how disputes should be resolved (Strathern 1972). Rapid localization resulted in the replacement of many seasoned officials with less experienced personnel, which compounded the difficult birth of the modern law and justice system. The police force was arguably ‘the most crippled of any government agency’ (Dorney 2000, 304). Its coverage in 1975 extended to only 10 per cent of Papua New Guinea’s total land area and 40 per cent of the population (quoted in Dorney 1990, 296). Many of its problems were attributed to inexperienced and untrained staff, including an acute shortage of commissioned officers and senior NCOs (Dorney 2000, 304).
A range of social and political problems emerged during the decolonization period that were to challenge the authority and capacity of the independent state. While most of these were already evident in the final period of the colonial administration (Nelson 2003), once independence was granted the ‘fundamental opposition between indigenous people and colonial powers was displaced by a far messier array of local divisions’ (Otto and Thomas 1997, 4). Some of these related to the aggravation of longstanding antagonisms between local groups, while others arose from divisions and tensions of more recent origin. The most serious manifestations included micronationalist movements in some of the more developed regions, notably Bougainville and the Gazelle Peninsula; the revival of tribal fighting in parts of the highlands; and the rise of street crime in the main urban centres.
The incidence and intensity of tribal fighting have increased in the post-independence period. Growing numbers of fatalities and serious injuries have resulted from the introduction of modern firearms (Burton 1990, 25). Crime control responses, consisting primarily of the deployment of mobile squads, have had little positive impact and, in the opinion of some observers, have often served to prolong fighting (Mapusia 1986, 108). Recent evidence suggests that tribal conflict — long viewed as a rural phenomenon confined to certain highlands provinces — has become a major source of tension and violence in some of the larger towns, including Port Moresby (Haley and Muggah 2006).
The most notorious manifestation of Papua New Guinea’s law and order problems has been the steady rise in violent urban crime, widely attributed to raskol gangs comprising adolescent boys and young men. By the second half of the 1980s, criminal gangs had entrenched themselves as a menacing feature of the urban landscape, with sophisticated networks extending across the country (Harris 1988). The widespread availability of small arms and light weapons, often sourced illegally from the defence force and the police, has added greatly to problems of criminal violence (Alpers 2005). Raskolism has also spread to many rural areas. Violence against women, including rape, is a problem throughout the country. In a series of studies in the 1980s, the Law Reform Commission documented endemic violence within marital relationships (Toft 1985, 1986). Sexual assaults are also commonplace outside of marriage. High levels of rape and sexual abuse have, in turn, contributed to the prevalence of STDs and rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic currently gripping Papua New Guinea.
With an establishment of just over 5,000 sworn officers, the size of the RPNGC has not grown significantly since independence despite the population having more than doubled from 2 million to over 5 million people during the 1975–2005 period. [1] The police to population ratio in Papua New Guinea was estimated at 1:1121 in 2002, substantially below the 1:380 ratio in 1975 and well under the U.N. recommended ratio of 1:450 (Public Sector Reform Management Unit 2002, 63). Policing problems are a significant part of the difficulties facing the administration of criminal justice in Papua New Guinea. While the RPNGC appear incapable of successfully undertaking routine criminal investigations and apprehending suspects, prosecutions often fail for lack of adequate evidence and preparation. Lengthy delays in the processing of court cases have resulted in large numbers of detainees on remand awaiting their hearings, while mass escapes from the country’s prison system are a regular occurrence.
Charges of ill-discipline and serious human rights abuses are levelled regularly against the RPNGC (Human Rights Watch 2005). Although susceptible to exploitation by vexatious litigants, a significant proportion of civil claims against the state originate in allegations of police violence. A 2004 review of the RPNGC commissioned by the Papua New Guinea government concluded that ‘policing was close to total collapse’ in many parts of the country (Administrative Review Committee 2004, 40). Responsibility for this alarming state of affairs was attributed to a lack of government support and direction; ineffective police leadership; inadequate and unreliable provision of resources to do the job; unpaid allowances and entitlements; barely adequate salaries; system-wide lack of discipline, accountability and self-respect; almost total absence of community trust and respect; and political interference in police operations.