Australian Federal Police recruiting targeting females

ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan has thrown his support behind his boss, federal Commissioner Reece Kershaw, who wants to lift the sworn, female cohort of his workforce to 30 per cent by 2028.

The federal police female representation currently sits at a low 22 per cent. The ACT police representation, according to its most recent annual report data, is higher at 29.7 per cent. But both are not high enough, the Commissioner says.

A significant issue at the federal level is that the highest female achievers don't appear to want to stay. Former Deputy Commissioner Leanne Close, a career police officer and former head of crime operations in the ACT, left the AFP to join the Australian Strategic Policy Institute while former ACT Chief Police Officer Justine Saunders left after 29 years to join Border Force.

The active targeting of female recruits for the "blue team" as police call it, also brings with it some potentially nasty pitfalls.

Queensland's police were enveloped in a recent discrimination scandal when the state's Crime and Corruption Commission found the force's 50/50 recruitment strategy resulted in discriminatory practices being used against male candidates.

The commission's report found that in some cases, ineligible women had been selected over male applicants who had performed at a higher standard in their entry assessments. It also found that six women were recruited despite failing to meet the minimum standards.

With the ranks of the federal police internally split into two "outcomes" - one which denotes officers seconded to federal duties and one for the contracted police service paid for by the ACT government - the ACT force has a significant stake in the national campaign's success.

Applicants must satisfy a minimum set of criteria, among them the necessity to be Australian citizens over 18, hold a full driver's licence, be prepared to undergo security vetting, and drug and alcohol testing.

READ MORE:

Applicants who have a previous criminal history, even as a juvenile, may not even pass the first gateway.

To become a probationary sworn officer, recruits must pass through all the gateways and successfully graduate via the standard recruit course at the AFP College in Barton, or the shorter course for "lateral" recruits - those officers already sworn but joining from other police forces.

Of the three recruit courses held during the 2019-20 financial year, 37 per cent of participants were female.

Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said that to achieve the boost, a roughly balanced number of male and female recruits need to come through "the [training] pipeline" but getting more women simply to apply was the first challenge.

"At the moment, our application intake of females is significantly less than males," he said.

"We don't have a quota but we certainly have a target. We need to represent the community we police and we can't do that when we've only 22-23 per cent of our workforce is female; we have to get closer to 50 [per cent]."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: