Lengthening the Arm of the Law

Julie Ayling is a Research Associate in the Regulatory Institutions Network at The Australian National University. She previously worked as a senior lawyer in a number of Australian government departments and authorities. Peter Grabosky is Professor at the Regulatory Institutions Network, The Australian National University, and Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. He is the 2006 winner of the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology. He is author most recently of Electronic Crime (2007) and Cyber Criminals on Trial (with Russell G. Smith and Gregor Urbas; Cambridge University Press, 2004), which won the Outstanding Book Award of the American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology. Clifford Shearing is Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has held positions at the University of Toronto, the Australian National University, and the University of the Western Cape. He is author most recently of Imagining Security (with Jennifer Wood; 2007) and Governing Security (with Les Johnston; 2003).

• 1. Introduction; 2. Obtaining and allocating police resources; 3. Coercion; 4. Sale – buying; 5. Sale – selling; 6. Gift; 7. Ambiguous exchanges and the police; 8. Conclusions.

'… (to return to the main thrust of the book) there are risks to reputation if everything is for sale. What are the police for? … who are they serving? As the authors say, police constantly have to make choices, because they do not have the resources to do everything the public feel the police ought to do.' Retail Security: Fraud and Loss Prevention Magazine