Pre-emptive policing: Suspect Targeting Management Plan 2000-2023
The Suspect Targeting Management Plan was a NSW Police Force program that ran from 2000 to 2023. It identified people who police said were at risk of committing future crimes. It guided how police interacted with these people including more frequent stops, questioning, home visits, and searches. It had disproportionate impacts on young people and Aboriginal people and was discontinued following an investigation by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission which found the program encouraged police to act beyond their power.
The Suspect Targeting Management Plan (STMP) was a pre-emptive NSW Police Force program that ran from 2000 to 2023 (, , ). Its purpose was to select and target people, including children, who police predicted might commit crimes in the future (). Pre-emptive policing (also known as preventive or proactive policing) are methods used by police before, rather than after, a crime has occurred (see also SUB0432 and see SUB0561).
The police identified people for targeting based on a risk assessment. This included both repeat offenders and individuals who had not been found guilty of offences but were suspected by police of being at risk of future crimes (, , ).
The STMP disproportionately targeted Aboriginal young people (, ).
Risk assessment
Assessment under the STMP began with the police nominating 13 high priority offences that aligned with the priorities of each Local Area Command. Individuals were then assigned a risk category of extreme, high, medium or low of committing any of these identified offences ().
The police decided the risk category based on two main risks. The first was the person’s ’crime environment risk’, meaning their likelihood of committing each priority offence. The second was their ‘person disposition risk’, meaning their likelihood of reoffending based on six factors ():
- volume of offences – a history or suspicion of multiple offences
- periods of imprisonment – includes any periods of incarceration or detention
- history of addiction – indicators of an addictive or other disorder
- violence – a history of violent offending
- networks – suspected involvement in any criminal networks or associations, or
- youth delinquency – any juvenile criminal activity.
Target Action Plans
A ‘Target Action Plan’ guided police interactions with the person, typically involving frequent stops, questioning, home visits at any hour, bail compliance checks, and searches (, ) (see SUB0432 and SUB0561).
The risk criteria and operational guidelines for the STMP were not publicly available. People placed under a Target Action Plan were not informed why they had been selected or how they might be removed from it ().
Research has shown that these types of risk assessment tools can reinforce biased policing and have minimal impact on crime reduction (, , , , ).
The STMP did not give police any new powers or have any basis in law. Though in practice, police relied upon a young person being subject to the STMP as grounds to stop and search them, and to conduct home visits. This ‘encouraged officers to act beyond their statutory powers’ and was found by the Law Enforcement Conduction Commission to be a practice that was, or may have been, ‘unreasonable, unjust, oppressive or improperly discriminatory in its effect on children and young people’ (, ).
Impact on Aboriginal people
In 2017, the New South Wales Youth Justice Coalition reported that the STMP disproportionately targeted young people, particularly Aboriginal people (). Data obtained for 2014-2015 from 10 Local Area Commands (local police) out of 76 Commands across NSW showed that ();
- 48.8% of all STMP targets were under 25 years old (with the youngest being 11 years old)
- 23.5% were under 18
- 44.1% identified as Aboriginal, and
- 93.4% were male.
By 2022, more than half of all adults and 71% of young people on the STMP identified as Aboriginal ().
In 2018 the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission launched a five year investigation into the STMP (known as ‘Operation Tepito’). The Commission released an interim report in 2020 (), and their final report in October 2023 ().
The Commission found that the STMP target selection process likely contributed to the ‘gross overrepresentation’ of young Aboriginal STMP targets and that this was unreasonable, unjust, oppressive and may have been improperly discriminatory in its effect ().
The Commission also found that, despite the ‘extremely high’ proportion of Aboriginal young people subject to the STMP, the NSW Police ‘did not appear to have any practical strategies’ for addressing this ().
The Commission found that the STMP met the threshold for agency maladministration. One of the reasons for this was that police failed to consult with specialist officers in deciding how to target young Aboriginal people (). The policy, guidelines, toolkits, and training resources for police under the STMP ‘did not contain any additional or clarifying information for police to consider when determining if certain targeting strategies were appropriate for young Aboriginal people’ ().
The Commission found that because no particular consideration was given to the circumstances of Aboriginal young people, the STMP ‘could do nothing other than repeat and compound the disproportionate representation of Aboriginal young people in the criminal justice system’ ().
Other research shows that targeting of Aboriginal people under the STMP had occurred disproportionately in combination with other police practices (, , , , ). This included policing public areas (see SUB0390), searches (see SUB0432), and bail compliance checks (see SUB0561). See also SUB0421.
End of the STMP
In October 2023, the police stopped using the program for children and young people (, ). The program was then discontinued for everyone in December 2023 (, ).