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Why bikie laws won't work |
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Written by Professor Paul Wilson | Bond University
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Thursday, 06 August 2009 14:10 |
 Photo: 'Why Bikie Laws Won't Work'. New laws in South Australia and NSW that proscribe bikie gangs have already been shown to be counter-productive in other countries. Professor Paul Wilson's address to the National Press Club sets out why this is so and why politicians have failed us all on this issue.
ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
5 AUGUST 2009, CANBERRA, ACT
DRACONIAN AND UNDEMOCRATIC:
WHY BIKIE LAWS WON’T WORK
PROFESSOR PAUL WILSON, OAM
CHAIR OF CRIMINOLOGY AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST
BOND UNIVERSITY
CONTACT:
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1. The Crimes (Criminal Organisations) Act of NSW and similar legislation in SA and other states is repugnant legislation, the likes of which we have not seen since the constitutional failure of the Communist Party Dissolution Act of 1950, which also aimed to proscribe a particular organisation. And, as Ian Barker, the veteran criminal barrister has indicated, it all arose because one biker beat another to death at Sydney airport. The airport itself was not under siege, and nor were ‘innocent civilians’ directly harmed.
2. These laws are undemocratic, focus on groups and not individuals, and like similar legislation in other countries will not only be ineffective but counterproductive. Indeed, they could lead to more violence among biker groups and more violence in the community generally.
3. There are undoubtedly some people who traffic in drugs and engage in other serious criminal activities in some biker clubs. But there are also some corrupt police officers (as we have seen recently in Queensland), churches who hide and conceal paedophiles, and financial and banking institutions whose employees commit fraud and engage in white-collar offences and consequently rob thousands of Australians of their life savings. However, we do not close down police forces, churches, financial institutions or companies because of the criminal activities of some of their members. Neither should we attempt to do the same with biker groups.
4. In this regard, given the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) revelations of corrupt dealings between some Queensland police officers and prison informers, it is especially relevant to note that the Queensland Law Society has pointed out for that State, police may, if association laws are introduced there, give free rein to some bikers and biker groups in return for corrupt payments, while their competitors are arrested and charged. ‘The handmaiden of organised crime is the corruption of officials, with police officers being the No1 target,’ the Society warns.
5. It is important to recognise that the amount of violence committed by bikers in Australia is not that large anyway. Recent figures presented to the Joint Parliamentary Committee to Review the Australian Crime Commission’s Serious and Organised Crimes Act by Dr Arthur Veno, and issued by the Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) reveal that gang-related violence, including violence generated by street, ethnic and biker groups, represents just 0.6 per cent of all crime, with biker gang-related violence estimated to account for only 0.3 per cent of crime in total.
Contrary to other criminal organisations, ‘outlaw motorcycle gangs’ (OMGs) operate on an individual basis instead of top-down, and are locally based. Clearly, as noted earlier, some individuals in some clubs are involved in drug trafficking and other crimes but so too are some other professional groups with considerable professional autonomy like priests, police officers, lawyers and financial consultants none of whom seems to be the target of criminal association laws.
6. Laws that banned outlaw motorcycle gangs/clubs in Canada led to the institutions of the state coming under attack (seven bombs found under police stations, two prison guards murdered, an anti-biker journalist crusader was almost killed, one innocent bystander mistaken to be a prison guard was murdered).
So there is a very good chance that association laws which targets groups as a whole will increase the probability of more public violence. Indeed, public safety and crime both appear not to be controlled by such legislation. Since 1994, there have been no less than 85 murders and 92 attempted murders related to Quebec’s biker wars as well as 129 arson attacks and 82 bombings (see Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2007b). Earlier this year 156 bikers, most from the Hells Angels, were arrested indicating that the Hells Angels despite tough laws are alive and well and no-one is seriously suggesting these arrests will be put the Hells Angels out of business out of business.
7. Indeed, I cannot find one iota of evidence to suggest that the relevant Canadian laws (especially C-95 which introduced in 1997 the ‘participation in a criminal organisation’ legislation) have diminished gang activity, reduced organised crime or led to the demise of biker gangs. Instead, and predictably, gang activity has changed, becoming displaced and more submerged and less able to be accessed by law enforcement. Anyone who believes that criminal individuals/groups involved in organised crime will not adapt to new and more draconian laws has simply not studied the history of organised crime.
In any event, as Phillip Boulton SC perceptively noted in regard to Australian association laws, if people are already killing and shooting each other then any new laws will not stop them meeting and ‘having a beer together’ (www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/31 /25308111.htm).
8. The veteran lawyer Ian Barker, in the same speech I quoted from earlier, recently pointed out that in his lifetime as a barrister he has seen, in various pieces of legislation, laws that might be attractive to voters, but they have severely eroded old principles such as the right to silence, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right of privacy, the right to see evidence against one, the right to confront one’s accuser, the freedom of the judiciary, and detention without charge.
Now we add onto that list laws that stop people from associating with each other. Where does it stop? How many liberties do we have to forsake to preserve the illusion that we are safer in our homes or on the streets?
9. It is not as though we are without alternatives. Other countries – Denmark being one – have made good progress in curbing crime among biker groups by smart, intelligence-led policing, without draconian laws. As well there is now a body of evidence that outlines the effective law enforcement practices and crime-prevention methods (encouraging biker club mediations for example) to deal with gang-related crime (see sources below). Let us not forget also that most states have extensive electronic monitoring laws and powerful laws via crime commissions to deal with organised crime.
We hardly need our legal rights to be further eroded by laws that punish groups for crimes that they might commit in the future in contrast to laws that target individuals for crimes that they have committed in the past.
Sources
• Beare, M. Structures, Strategies and Tactics of Transnational Criminal Organisation http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/transnational/bearesst.pdf
• Cherry, P. The Biker Trials: Bringing down the Hells Angels, ECW Press, Toronto, 2005
• Examples of sensible police initiatives targeting individuals and designing ‘best practice’ models can be seen by tactics employed by the Danish Police (see http://www.politi.dk/NR/rdonlyres/7F44AA29-5DC2-40C4-8E37-B17C87286E32/0/App_C.pdf)
• Gottschalk, P. Maturity levels for criminal organisations, International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, Vol 36, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 106-114
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police Gazette 2007a Murder of prison guards in Quebec. Minister for Public Works and Government Services (Canada), Vol 61, Number 90 — describes in detail the murders of prison guards and bomb attacks by the Hells Angels against the law enforcement agencies as retribution for the gaoling of the Hells Angels in 2005/6
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police Gazette 2007b Ripping off society. Minister for Public Works and Government Services (Canada), Vol 60
• See Synthesis of Evidence from Interventions to Reduce Gang Related Crime: Comparison of Rapid Evidence Assessment and Systematic Review Processes and Outcomes by James Hodgkinson as mentioned in the Campbell Collaboration available at www.campbellcollaboration.org/crime_and_justice/index.php
• There are some excellent evidence-based research studies that assess ‘best practice’ police responses to gang problems that do not rely on new, tougher laws (see for example, C.M. Katz and V.J. Webb, Police Response to Gangs: A Multi-Site Study at http://www.popcenter.org/problems/drive_by_shooting/PDFs/Katz_Webb_2003.pdf)
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