To overcome the Australian Federal Police's challenges in recruiting a more diverse, but increasingly disengaged audience, we created a six part podcast called Crime Interrupted.

Each episode declassifies and delves into a particular, notorious serious crime from Australia's recent history - from terrorism to sex trafficking - and through an intriguing narrative, shows the diverse skills from diverse candidates required to stop them. We partnered with top true podcast team Casefile, who spoke to officers, victims and even criminals to offer a truly compelling picture of a career in the AFP.

Crime Interrupted became Australia's second most popular podcast and #1 true crime podcast.

Crime Interrupted Trailer Script

Casefile: The Australian Federal Police is Australia’s national policing agency.

Their work includes counter terrorism, serious organised crime, cybercrime, fraud, child exploitation and human trafficking.

Officer: Within human trafficking, it’s a tightrope to walk between prosecuting someone for a human trafficking offence, and looking after the victim.

Officer: Her nose was bleeding profusely, they couldn’t call an ambulance or police because they know what’s going to happen.

Officer: The money that she had made during that week was $82,500 dollars. And that was her worst week in 10 years.

Casefile: The Casefile team has been given exclusive access to the AFP case vault to bring you stories of some of their most challenging operations. Narrated by me, you’ll hear in depth interviews with AFP federal agents and learn how they investigated and interrupted the most serious of crimes.

Officer: Her level of criminality and just the level of smartness that people didn’t actually attribute to her.

Officer: What our job is in cyber crime is to make sure that we do know about it.

Casefile: Gain and insight into how the AFP disrupted a major human trafficking syndicate and arrested a sex offender who was targeting children online.

Officer: By the number of victims he targeted, it wasn’t just one child or two children, it was hundreds of children.

Officer: The threat was always there, always present, like a dark cloud hanging over their heads.

Officer: He kind of mocks one of the boys where he says; “You think I’ll be caught?”

Casefile: From investigating counter terrorism and disrupting major drug important chains to international kidnappings, we take an inside look at some of the biggest investigations and learn how the AFP stayed a step ahead.

Victim: I was led into the house and I was met with another two guys, one with a handmade pistol, another one with a machete.

Victim: Des sounds as though he’s really in trouble, he doesn’t sound himself.

Victim: If you give them the money, they could kill you. Or if you don’t give them the money, they can still kill you.

Officer: When you’re talking about a 21-year-old offender, who still lives at home, it’s a fair shock to your Dad when the police aren’t only knocking at your door, they’re breaking it down.

Casefile: Crime Interrupted is the latest release from Casefile Presents.

The first episode will be available on February 4, with new episodes dropping weekly.

Listen for free wherever you get your podcast and be sure to hit the follow button so you don’t miss an episode.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government tasked with investigating and preventing serious crime, ranging from terrorism to human trafficking. As serious crime evolves and becomes more complex, the skillsets required to stay a step ahead of it and the people required to prevent it have become more diverse.

Problem is, law enforcement has an image problem. They're often seen to use force over finesse, and are considered a relatively dated and male-dominated industry by the very candidates they require. To combat these misperceptions and position themselves as a progressive and fulfilling career for diverse candidates, in 2021 the AFP repositioned themselves as an organisation that ‘outsmarts serious crime with intelligent action’.

To better reflect this positioning, we were tasked with creating a recruitment campaign aimed at diverse and diversely-skilled candidates that the AFP required to tackle complex serious crime.

The innovative element of our work was driven by two key stats around social behaviour.

Firstly, that 91% of people find traditional advertising more interruptive than ever*.

Secondly, that 86% of people now consider entertainment a vital need*.

Breaking down the broad area of 'entertainment' according to our specific audience, we found that 37% of Australians aged 12 and over are now listening to podcasts each month**, and within that, true crime is one of Australia’s fastest growing genres, particularly amongst our primary desired demographic (women aged 17 – 25).

And so, influenced by our audiences' social behaviour, rather than traditional recruitment media that our audience was disengaging with, the AFP - a federal government organisation - leaned into world of entertainment, and turned their recruitment into successful true crime podcast episodes.

* The Future of Entertainment Prosumer Report

** Infinite Dial 2021 report conducted by Edison Research