He­len Dray­ton

Par­lia­ment has passed the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill af­ter vig­or­ous con­tri­bu­tions for and against, cul­mi­nat­ing in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s nasty slurs and un­war­rant­ed at­tacks on the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for vot­ing against it. Ear­li­er, De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge asked those warn­ing about a po­lice state whether they would pre­fer a “ban­dit state.” He should know that in a con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy, we are not re­quired to choose be­tween the two.

The bill has fea­tures of a po­lice state, and the dan­ger is when co­er­cive po­lice pow­ers be­come rou­tine. The le­git­i­mate ques­tion is whether ex­cep­tion­al crime-fight­ing pow­ers have suf­fi­cient safe­guards against abuse.

But what might a “ban­dit state” look like? Crim­i­nal­i­ty is too of­ten viewed sole­ly as mur­der, kid­nap­ping, home in­va­sion, traf­fick­ing and oth­er crimes.

A June 2026 UK gov­ern­ment coun­try as­sess­ment, draw­ing on UN and oth­er re­search, doc­u­ment­ed al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in­volv­ing po­lice, cus­toms, im­mi­gra­tion and coast guard of­fi­cials. It cit­ed re­search re­port­ing po­lice links with the drug trade and gangs, al­le­ga­tions of of­fi­cers act­ing as gang in­for­mants, and pub­lic con­tracts be­ing award­ed to gang lead­ers. This mat­ters be­cause or­gan­ised crime does not op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly of in­sti­tu­tions.

The same UK as­sess­ment cites the US State De­part­ment’s find­ing of nu­mer­ous cred­i­ble re­ports of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion and con­cerns about opaque pro­cure­ment, along­side al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal re­la­tion­ships with gang lead­ers and con­tracts reach­ing crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es.

Against that back­ground, Gov­ern­ment has in­tro­duced amend­ments to the Pro­cure­ment Act. The bill ex­pands cat­e­gories of State ex­pen­di­ture out­side nor­mal pro­cure­ment re­quire­ments, in­clud­ing en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, while lim­it­ing the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor’s pow­ers. The bill fol­lows the reg­u­la­tor’s in­quiry in­to pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, in­volv­ing some $3.4 bil­lion in con­tracts. The Gov­ern­ment ar­gues the amend­ments are nec­es­sary to fa­cil­i­tate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and ac­cel­er­ate de­vel­op­ment. How­ev­er, stream­lin­ing pro­cure­ment to speed up de­ci­sion-mak­ing in pri­or­i­ty ar­eas should not hap­pen at the ex­pense of ro­bust over­sight, trans­paren­cy, and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Gut­ting pro­cure­ment safe­guards in­creas­es cor­rup­tion risk pre­cise­ly when the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to re­duce crime.

The po­lice crime sta­tis­tics re­quire care­ful in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Po­lice re­port­ed a 41% de­cline in mur­ders, from 625 in 2024 to 369 in 2025 - a pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment. There were about 179 po­lice killings be­tween Jan­u­ary 2024 and Au­gust 2026, with the high­est con­cen­tra­tion dur­ing pe­ri­ods of the State of Emer­gency (SoE). There’s need for an in­de­pen­dent eval­u­a­tion of the SoE op­er­a­tions, as­sess­ing se­ri­ous crime, de­tec­tion rates, PDO is­suance, ar­rests and charges, pros­e­cu­tions, and po­lice killings—not mur­ders alone.

The Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions leg­is­la­tion seeks to sus­tain crime sup­pres­sion with­out in­vok­ing emer­gency pow­ers. It per­mits mil­i­tary per­son­nel to as­sist do­mes­tic polic­ing; it lim­its cit­i­zens’ free­dom in ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas: it per­mits cur­fews, cor­dons, en­trance and ex­it con­trols, war­rant­less search­es based on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion, and there’s no max­i­mum time lim­it for de­ten­tions with­out charge.

The Prime Min­is­ter can ve­to ap­point­ments of Heads of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, in­flu­ence po­lice and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions, and de­cide when to open and close ar­eas (Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly, the Pres­i­dent acts on the ad­vice of the Ex­ec­u­tive). It en­ables sur­veil­lance and search pow­ers that can tram­ple jour­nal­ism and po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty; there’s no max­i­mum time lim­it for spe­cial area re­stric­tions and cur­fews.

The safe­guards in­clude ju­di­cial over­sight of de­ten­tion—a sig­nif­i­cant safe­guard, par­lia­men­tary over­sight, hu­man-rights train­ing for po­lice of­fi­cers, body-worn cam­eras where prac­ti­ca­ble and as re­sources per­mit, and a two-year sun­set clause.

Whether these safe­guards are suf­fi­cient and the re­stric­tions pro­por­tion­ate re­main se­ri­ous is­sues. While courts will over­see de­ten­tion with­out charge, there’s no time lim­it. Ju­di­cial re­views af­ter war­rant­less search­es can­not pre­vent ma­li­cious in­tru­sions. Par­lia­men­tary re­port­ing pro­vides ac­count­abil­i­ty on­ly if it pro­duces mean­ing­ful scruti­ny. The leg­is­la­tion qual­i­fies body-cam­era re­quire­ment, so it’s not an ab­solute ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence makes safe­guards par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant. Like the SoE in 2011, when thou­sands were de­tained and lat­er dis­charged with­out charge, we have just wit­nessed hun­dreds more in­car­cer­at­ed un­der PDOs for months un­der in­hu­man con­di­tions, then re­leased with­out charge. How many were law-abid­ing cit­i­zens?

We are all con­cerned about crime. We want ef­fec­tive polic­ing. Falling mur­der rates un­der SoEs and ex­pand­ed co­er­cive po­lice pow­ers are not proof of an ef­fi­cient crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. De­tec­tion, ev­i­dence gath­er­ing, pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tion are the cru­cial mea­sures of sus­tain­able ef­fec­tive­ness. That de­mands the Gov­ern­ment con­front pub­lic cor­rup­tion as se­ri­ous­ly as blood crimes, and po­lice-gang and pub­lic-sec­tor crim­i­nal links.

The is­sue is not whether SOs have a le­git­i­mate role in crime fight­ing, but whether the Gov­ern­ment has the will to stop the pub­lic cor­rup­tion that helps crim­i­nals sur­vive and sus­tain re­duc­tions in vi­o­lent crime while pre­serv­ing our lib­er­ty.