| Publication |
2005.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Increasingly, significant numbers of personnel are deployed in field missions either to serve as police officers or to assist in reforming national police capacity. Reforming and building a police system - in this article termed 'policebuilding' - is exceedingly difficult, demanding the condensing of diverse training skills in a very short period and fast-forwarding the development of skills that are ideally built up over generations. This article examines the Australian initiative of 2004 that broke with the makeshift pattern of international police reform by forming an International Police Deployment Group (IDG). It assesses the deployment to the Solomon Islands in order to draw out lessons for future instances in which IDG officers may be called upon. The IDG appears to offer an apt structure, depth of planning, continuity of staffing and steadiness of resourcing that past missions have lacked. Yet, while relative calm and basic levels of law and order have been restored to the Solomon Islands, transferring authority and successfully supporting local police reform has proven to be more difficult.
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