Today the Centre Against Racial Profiling (CARP) released important new research exposing the discriminatory and ineffective use of Victoria Police’s ‘designated area’ powers- a regime that allows police to stop and search people without reasonable grounds or a warrant. The findings confirm what affected communities and civil liberties advocates have long argued: these powers are improperly used to entrench unequal treatment, discriminatory police practices and unnecessary intrusion into the everyday life of Victorians.
This comprehensive analysis of every designated area declared by police from 2019–2024 shows that these powers are not deployed where crime occurs. Instead, they are used to target racialised and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. CARP’s report shows that police are twice as likely to target communities with higher proportions of racialised residents, despite there being no corresponding increase in crime.
Crucially, these patterns reinforce concerns about the ineffectiveness of these powers to combat crime. Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project’s analysis of police’s own data released under freedom of information laws found that over nearly 24,000 warrantless searches conducted in designated areas between January 2021 and January 2023 resulted in contraband being found in only around 1% of cases.
These powers allow police to search people in circumstances in which it is unreasonable to suspect that a person is in possession of a weapon or illicit substances. It is therefore unsurprising that they are not an effective tool to address crime.
Searches without reasonable suspicion or judicial authorisation are a serious departure from foundational norms that protect all Victorians from arbitrary intrusion of their basic rights and civil liberties, and disproportionately burden First Nations peoples and other racialised communities.
The findings should prompt the Victorian Government to rethink the existence of these ineffective and harmful laws. Liberty Victoria calls on the Victorian Government to repeal the designated search area powers. Liberty Victoria remains firm that police should not be given the ability to give themselves broad, discretionary powers that can be exercised without meaningful oversight, transparency, or accountability.
Quotes attributable to Gemma Cafarella, President of Liberty Victoria
“This vital research by the Centre Against Racial Profiling proves what First Nations people and other people of colour have been saying for a long time: powers that allow police to stop and search people without a good reason are being used to target communities based on race.”
“Giving police the ability to grant themselves impunity to stop and search people at will is deeply counter-productive. It damages trust between police and communities, entrenches racial profiling, and fails to improve public safety outcomes. We call on the State Government to repeal these powers entirely and instead invest in early-intervention measurers that address the root causes of crime.”