Key Findings (based on available data)
During 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 Victoria Police were consistently less likely to find a reported item when they searched a person they perceived to be African, Middle Eastern/Mediterranean, Indian and Asian compared with people they perceived to be White. This means they are likely to be searching these groups with less reasonable grounds than when they search White people. This is evidence of racial profiling against these groups. (Figure 3)
In 2023 Aboriginal people were eleven times more likely to be searched by Victoria Police than White people, people perceived to be African were eight times more likely to be searched than White people, people perceived as Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean were five times more likely to be searched than White people, and people perceived to be Pacific Islander were four times more likely to be searched than White people. (Figure 7) This indicates that police are targeting these groups for investigation. These findings were largely consistent with figures from 2022.
The over-policing of particular communities evident in the search data is confronting and deeply disturbing. As the search find rates for these groups are roughly equivalent to — or less than — the find rates of white people, this over-policing (over-sampling) is evidence of both systemic racism in Victoria Police practices and systematic racial profiling. If police are eleven times more likely to search a person they perceive to be Aboriginal than a person they perceive to be White — and the hit rates for searches of these groups are roughly the same — this means that Aboriginal people are eleven times more likely to be criminalised and enter the criminal legal system than White people as a consequence of police activities alone. If police search (or otherwise investigate) a particular community at a greater rate than others, this will result in their discovering more crime in that community than others. This over-sampling has dramatic consequences in terms of who is arrested, who has to deal with courts, who has to encounter the prison system, criminal record discrimination, time off work, impacts on families, stigma, stereotyping and a whole range of other consequences including increasing risks of physical and psychological harm and deaths associated with police and criminal justice contact.
Excluding vehicle only searches, about 17% of police search records fail to record ethnic appearance despite completion of this field being made mandatory in 2019. (Figure 8)
What do these findings mean? The findings provide evidence that Victoria Police continues to engage in racial profiling despite its 2015 ban. Furthermore, the findings suggest that racial profiling in Victoria is likely to be at least as problematic as other multicultural societies, such as England and Wales, and states and provinces in the US and Canada where data exists. Consequently, addressing racial profiling deserves far greater institutional attention in Australia than it currently receives.
