POLICING COVID-19

Inner Melbourne Community Legal obtained and analysed 37, 405 COVID-19 fines issued by police in 2020 via an FOI request costing $622.64.

Their report, published in 2023, found evidence of over-policing:

• African/Middle Eastern people were four times more likely to be issued with a COVID fine than expected based on their population size.

• First Nations people were 2.5 times more likely to be issued with a COVID fine than expected based on their population size.

• A comparison of fines based on visually apparent breaches with fines that required investigation before a breach was evident, revealed evidence of racial profiling against African and Middle Eastern people.

• 23.5% of fine records were missing racial appearance data.

You can look at the data here.

Thank you to the Police Accountability Project and Inner Melbourne Community Legal Centre for access to this data.