7. Conclusion

Policing in the Pacific Islands continues to be shaped and impacted by multiple factors within and beyond individual countries and the broader region. The region itself is a malleable construct and one whose successive framings by external actors have been increasingly challenged and reimagined by indigenous intellectuals and leaders (Hau’ofa, 1994). It is a region renowned for its traditions and resilience, as well as its socio-linguistic and cultural diversity, with significant variations in experiences of colonisation, independent statehood, and post-colonial development. This diversity is echoed in that between Pacific Island police organisations, including in terms of their size, domestic legitimacy, technical capabilities, and the security challenges they face. While a growing emphasis in recent years has been upon the external threat posed by transnational crime in an era of unprecedented globalisation, in parts of the region, as in the case of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, the most pressing security challenges for domestic police forces remain internal in character, reflecting factors and processes particular to those countries.

Our discussions throughout the previous chapters provide insights as well as a selective overview of what we consider to be pertinent areas relevant to understanding the Pacific policing landscape. Given that police represent the most visible instrument of government authority, it is important to understand the challenges they face and issues they respond to, how they engage with local and international state and non-state social actors in the security space, and how they respond and adapt to shifting local, regional, and international priorities. Our overview aims not only to provide insights into policing in the Pacific region, but also to draw attention to the national and regional complexities of functioning within security spaces that have distinct and intricate histories, cultures, societies, and politics. The chapters also show the significance of the roles public police play and the extensive demands they face from a range of stakeholders.

In addition to the range of resource constraints common to all public service organisations, regional and domestic factors complicate policing in the Pacific, including significant differences between—as well as within—some countries, and enduring colonial and precolonial legacies in others. These factors include variations in the authority, legitimacy, and institutional capabilities of different states and the nature of their accommodation with alternate sources of authority within their territorial borders; for example, those premised on appeals to local kastom or tradition. Whereas a ‘strong’ state such as Fiji has little difficulty in asserting its writ through its monopoly of coercive power, state consolidation remains a work in progress in the larger Melanesian countries, with state authority regularly ignored or contested, or, in the case of Bougainville, violently repudiated. While by no means the only dynamic at work, the underlying friction between centralised authority embodied in the modern state and the continuing autonomy and legitimacy of alternative sources of authority at local levels remains a stubbornly persistent faultline in the domestic politics of countries such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and, to a lesser extent, Vanuatu. Ideas about maintaining law and order across the region continue to shift not only as the jurisdictions are impacted by environmental, political, and international factors, but also as a result of the changing nature of crime and evolving categories of criminality, victims and perpetrators requiring police responses. While in some Pacific Island states there is acknowledgement of the role of other non-state stakeholders in responding to disputes and infractions, the police remain the official instrument of state authority with a law enforcement mandate. The modification of domestic legislation to accommodate international human rights and environmental obligations has resulted in the expansion of the policing domain to include areas previously neglected, or viewed as the purview of other local stakeholders operating primarily at the community level.

As police grapple to respond to existing challenges, they are also required to prepare for new roles borne of global mobilities. The region’s relative isolation, its porous borders, and its geographic location at the centre of major transport (mainly shipping) routes linking different continents, as well as the frailties of its state institutions, make it an ideal transit point for international criminal activities. This is a growing challenge for relatively small and insular Pacific Island police organisations. Technologically enabled crime, crimes against the environment, organised and transitional crime, and crime against members of previously non-identified marginalised groups add to the pressures on these organisations to operate well beyond their functional capacities. This provides an imperative, as well as opportunities, for organisational adaptation and partnering with other agencies and stakeholders (domestic, regional, and international) to better respond to the changing demands of this evolving security-scape.

The plural character of policing provision in countries across the region, with the existence of multiple policing actors, makes partnering as possible as it is practical. Non-state actors, including the community-based and religious providers with a long history of policing and security provision in this region, can assist resource-constrained public police organisations as part of broader security assemblages with a shared goal of enhancing public security. The continued existence of older forms of self-policing, along with the emergence of more recent privatised, transnational, and other hybrid policing arrangements, suggests there is value in rethinking how policing capacity is both conceptualised and operationalised. This is also about moving away from conventional deficit approaches to developing policing capacity by recognising existing areas of local strength and resilience that can be drawn upon to facilitate partnering for improved policing outcomes in an intrinsically plural and rapidly changing policing environment.

Policing in the Pacific region requires not only an inward-looking approach to gain insights into domestic players in the security space of a particular country, but also an outward-looking approach to capitalise on regional and international partnerships and collaborative arrangements that can lead to better policing outcomes for all Pacific Island citizens. The evolving regional policing architecture is complex, with a multiplicity of partners and different organisations operating nationally and regionally with related mandates. Within these organisations, there are often sub-sections and specialised units with varied focal areas that may overlap with each other.

The uniqueness of different Pacific landscapes challenges police organisations to formulate policing strategies that align with national interests and also extend beyond state jurisdictions to prevent crime and fulfil their domestic law-and-order mandate. This type of policing necessitates the constant negotiation and navigation of relationships among varied security service stakeholders. Such manoeuvring is further complicated by the constrained coverage provided by the justice sector, the limits of national police organisations and the need to function within the broader international policing framework. What remains constant in the international policing space is the acknowledgement of the need to partner, and regional commitment both to maintaining existing partnerships and forging ahead with new partnerships as the policing landscape continues to evolve.

As police organisations continue to adapt to changing global and regional realities, it is also important to understand how the gender landscape is navigated in what continues to be globally viewed as a masculine space (though significantly more inclusive and aggressively contested as masculine spaces). Pacific policing literature remains considerably lacking in terms of presentations of gender—or, more specifically, women in policing—as a topical issue requiring further discussion. As the numbers of women in policing continue to grow, there is greater need to understand their experiences not only as a point from which to initiate dialogue about the unique challenges and opportunities faced by women in policing, but also as the catalyst for increased dialogue about the role of women in strongly patriarchal societies. The increasing numbers of women in policing and the expansion of their policing roles highlight shifts in gender inclusivity practices and dialogue, underscore discussions about increasing opportunities for women in Pacific societies, and slowly prompt further dialogue about the role women play in society, particularly in responding to crime and criminality.

The roles of history, culture, and geography cannot be underemphasised in discussions about women in policing. While we acknowledge the need to advance the gender agenda in Pacific policing scholarship, we stress the need for well-considered and carefully implemented approaches, as ill-conceived attempts may ultimately work in its disservice. What is important to note is how policing, gender, culture, and context intersect to action change.

Policing in the Pacific Islands draws attention to the gaps in research on Pacific policing and topical issues specific to security service provision across the region. The lack of systematic data on policing in the region not only highlights the complexities of researching and presenting scholarship based on a regional categorisation, but also raises questions about the suitability of regional one-size-fits-all policies and the impracticality of accurate regional generalisations. We subscribe to the idea of a Pacific criminology, as suggested by Forsyth et al. (2020), to more systematically cover common ground using appropriate methodologies and engaging all relevant stakeholders. Understandings of policing in the Pacific Islands require an approach cognisant of context and actors, and a flexibility to engage with and across different disciplinary ways of knowing and being. The concurrent thread throughout our discussions is the need to acknowledge the ever-changing and diverse landscape of policing in the Pacific, and to recognise that there is much ground to be covered in providing an all-inclusive portrait of policing in Pacific Island countries and territories. Our modest contribution provides a useful starting point.