The Legality of Killings by Australian Police

Abstract

This article is a summary of the central point made in the writer's recent book, POLICE KILLINGS IN AUSTRALIA. (Penguin, 1970), which will be referred to simply as POLICE KILLINGS in this article. That central point is that it is highly probable that the majority of killings by police in the course of their duty occur in circumstances which are not permitted by law, but that the legality or illegality of such killings is never tested in an effective way because of various defects in the actual administration of the law. So invariable and systematic is the failure to test such conduct that one can say that the law, while remaining formally unchanged, has in fact been modified so as to afford greater protection to a privileged group within society-the police.