Police In India Research Articles

Status of Women Police in India: An Analytical Study of Uttar Pradesh State Police

Despite a number of efforts by the Government to increase the representation of women in police, it has continued to be relatively sluggish. The Government's data shows that there were a total of 2,17,026 women in police forces, which made up 10.5 percent of the entire police force in the country. Very few women police are recruited for leadership positions. The reasons behind the lesser representation of women police in the police department include the working conditions, societal status of women, recruitment rules, retention and promotion discrimination, inadequate infrastructure, and the police image in society etc. Article 355 of the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India mandates the Union to safeguard each State from both internal and external disturbances. The responsibility for public order crimes and law enforcement falls under the State's jurisdiction, as designated by Article 246 of the Constitution. Therefore, each State has to establish a police force capable of enforcing laws, maintaining public order, and ensuring the safety of its citizens. The United Nations report underscores the importance of women in the police force, noting that the current ratio of 137 police per lakh population falls short of the required 181 police per lakh population. The United Nations recommends a ratio of 222 police per lakh population, a goal that we are currently far from achieving. The present paper provides police data along with the strength of the women police in India. This also highlights the various committees' recommendations for women's policing and the development of the police force through equality and quality of women working in the police system. Some crucial suggestions and recommendations have been provided to increase the recruitment of women in police organisations.

Police work and the politics of expendability in India

This article examines how rank-and-file police in contemporary India express work-related grievances regarding official neglect of their well-being, systemic exploitation by government authorities and other elites, and routinized threats of bodily harm and death. It analyzes these experiences as manifestations of a ‘politics of expendability’ through which police, conceived as security laborers, are ironically condemned to exclusion from a morally and materially ‘good life’, and only partially or superficially compensated for the often questionably licit kinds of work demanded of them. Conceiving this politics as both intersecting with and reflective of broader structures of systemic inequality and oppressive violence, I consider recent cases of constables publicly complaining about their working and living conditions through social media, quitting their jobs, and dying by suicide as signs of resignation-cum-protest. In so doing, I demonstrate how the social demands for police work as security labor are co-configured with a devaluation of police life that produces affects of despair and structures of disposability. Rethinking the globalized paradox of police demonization-cum-valorization, this study raises challenging questions about how police in India – as well as in other contexts, and especially in Global South postcolonies – may be conceived as expendable workers. It further considers how, moving forward, we must work to reimagine what policing as institutionalized security labor and police work are – and ought to be.

Technology and Policing in India- Exploring the Issues and Challenges

Technology plays a vital role in all walks of life. Crime and crime investigation is no exception to this scenario. As technology evolved so did the crimes. Technology is being used as a tool to commit a crime. Traditional crime investigation technique might not be compatible to resolve this problem. Currently information and communication technology has been used by police to store, collect and share data. Space technology is also been used in India for collecting real time information which helps in predicting the occurrence of a crime. Similarly, applications are developed in such a way to alert police in case of emergency. CCTV is used through the country to keep a watch on commission of crime. These recordings play a vital role in investigating and arresting a crime suspect. Face recognition technologies are also used to identify the suspect. A person’s social media profile can be used to know about him. On the other hand, use of technology by police has also leads to repercussion like breach of privacy. It is worth noting that there is no legislation to regulate the use of technology by police. Although we have Information Technology Act 2000, it does not provide exclusively for use of Information Technology by Police. Usage of technology in preventing and investigating crime needs proper training. Technologies that are invented in other countries might be expensive. Police and private sector partnership is essential for using technology, which could only be achieved through a legislative back up. The author in this research paper examines a wide range of technology being used by modern police in India, legislative lacunas, issues and challenges in using technology and recommend a suitable solution for the problem.

The relationship between legitimacy and cooperation with the police - an empirical assessment

PurposeThe police require the cooperation of the public to ensure security in society. People cooperate with the police because they share norms and values reflected in the law and police action. Police face challenges in obtaining the cooperation of the public. There are studies examining the relationship between the legitimacy of the police and cooperation with the police. Using Tankebe's (2013) model of legitimacy as a multidimensional concept, this study examines the relationship between legitimacy and cooperation with the police in India.Design/methodology/approachFor examining the relationship, the study uses data collected from a survey of 705 victims of crime in India who had interacted with the police. The research questions were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM).FindingsOn the basis of the analyses, the study concludes that legitimacy is a multidimensional concept encompassing police lawfulness, procedural justice, distributive justice and effectiveness. The legitimacy of the police has both a direct impact on cooperation with the police and the obligation to obey as a mediating variable. The study indicates that legitimacy is an important antecedent to cooperation with the police, which has significant policy implications.Originality/valueThe study is significant as there are no studies examining the relationship between the legitimacy of police and cooperation with the police in India, which is a non-Western developing country and the largest democracy in the world. The present research is the first study of this nature.

Gang-based Cybercrime of Juvenile Society in Bangladesh: Challenges and Remedies

Teenagers of Bangladesh are entering the world of cyber-crime using online and apps. From gambling, pornography to human trafficking, their position is now in the mafia kingdom. The biggest concern and discomfort is that in front of their parents, the youngsters are intoxicated with this doomsday game, but they have no idea about it. Recently, Bangalore police in India arrested five Bangladeshis in connection with gang rape and torture of a woman. One of them is AV Hridyo. He is known as 'TikTok Hriday', said Bangladesh Police. According to the information provided by them, Hridiya was committing the crime of trafficking women by luring them to work on TikTok app. Those detained in India including him tortured a young woman from Bangladesh with the intention of trafficking. The Indian police arrested them only after that video went viral. Online and social media fraud, sexual harassment and many other crimes are already going on in Bangladesh. However, this new type of crime is raising the alarm. In addition, for these crimes, there are various groups of criminals online, social media and apps. The names of those groups are known in the investigation. For the first time in Bangladesh, the police found the dreaded LSD drug after the death of a student of Dhaka University. This drug communication also goes online. The police said that they have found multiple groups of drug users and suppliers on Facebook. In addition, last October, the police arrested three students of a private university associated with online pornography. They built the pornography market in the developed world. They used to create pornography under the guise of friendship. Earlier, another such group was caught in 2014. According to social scientists, social degradation and political misogyny are at the root of juvenile delinquency. Due to the lack of proper practice of moral values from childhood in educational institutions including family, one day slowly becomes reckless. They get involved in different branches of crime without their knowledge.

Building the case for restricted use of predictive policing tools in India

The use of predictive policing by law enforcement agencies has lately proliferated across several states in India. Predictive policing uses machine learning models to analyse substantial amounts of crime data to map and predict crimes, offenders, identities of the perpetrators and victims of crime. The aim is to enable the efficient allocation of limited resources at the disposal of law enforcement agencies for crime prevention. However, evidence suggests that predictive policing, in its current form, suffers from serious limitations. Inferior quality datasets are being used to train algorithms and citizens are unable to contest inaccurate algorithmic outcomes that could lead to their preventive detentions, often to the detriment of criminal justice norms and constitutional fundamental rights of citizens. More importantly, in the absence of oversight mechanisms restricting its use, the use of predictive policing has ended up reinforcing and amplifying police biases in law enforcement. This paper focuses, in particular, on the many ways in which predictive policing increases the risk of preventive detentions under section 151 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973 and proposes recommendations to preclude possibilities of unlawful preventive detentions using predictive policing tools. In part 1, the paper reviews the practice of preventive detention of potential offenders by the police in India—under section 151 of the CrPC. In part 2, I build the case for restricted use of predictive policing tools to only predict the location, type and time of the crime and not potential offenders or victims. In the last part, I recommend substantive measures and procedural safeguards to secure the reliable and accountable use of place-based predictive policing tools in India.

Examining the gender equity outlook and patriarchal beliefs of police constables in Allahabad, India: A machine learning approach

Abstract This cross-sectional study examined the association between gender equity outlook (GEO) and patriarchal beliefs (PB) among 190 police constables in Allahabad, India. Results of linear regression and the scatter plot analysis revealed an inverse association (ß= −0.33, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.16–0.49) between the GEO and PB of police constables. The feature selection technique of machine learning was also used to understand which socio-demographic characteristics were most important in explaining the GEO and PB. Recursive features elimination, a decision tree, random forest, ridge, and lasso regression showed gender as the most important feature (GEO ß= 3.66, 95% CI, P < 0.00; PB ß= 9.54, 95% CI, P < 0.00) followed by age and education in explaining the prevalence of GEO and PB. The findings underscore the importance of (re)shaping policing policies and interventions with a particular focus on gender equity and equality in eliminating the prevalent patriarchy among police in India.

The relationship between family cohesion, family-work conflict, enrichment and psychological health of Indian police

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to test the influence of family cohesion on family-to-work conflict (FWC), family-to-work enrichment (FWE) and psychological health. The study also aims to investigate the impact of FWC and FEW on psychological health. The study uses conservation of resources theory as a theoretical base.Design/methodology/approachData came from frontline officers of Rajasthan police in India using a purposive sampling technique. The study utilizes Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling to test the proposed research model.FindingsThe findings reveal that family cohesion is a critical family resource that diminishes FWC and boosts FWE. The findings further demonstrate that FWE improves psychological health. Lastly, the study displays that FWE fully mediates the link between family cohesion and psychological health.Research limitations/implicationsThe male-dominated sample prevents evaluating gender differences in the proposed relationships. Generalizations to other cultures and contexts are limited. The findings of the study suggest that police administrators need to understand the family characteristics of officers and plan interventions to facilitate a cohesive family environment in the police.Originality/valueLittle is known about the family direction relationships (FWC and FWE) in work-family research. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to test a model of family cohesion, FWC, FWE and psychological health.

Juvenile Justice System, Reforms and Policing System in India: Origin, Dialectics, Comparisons, and Way Forward

AbstractThis article studies the juvenile justice system in juxtaposition to policing in India. To start with, it conducts a comprehensive data analysis of juvenile crimes in India in the last two decades. The author conducted a study involving 400 juveniles in conflict with the law through “Disha,” a project in juvenile re-entry systems. It further marshals the incidences based on social parameters like education, age, and family. Here, the paper impresses upon the “heinousness factor” of the crimes to evaluate the law and institutional response. The article examines the growth of the legal framework on juvenile justice in India and the causal determinants which may have driven its increase. It also scrutinizes the policing systems as far as the legal framework on juvenile justice makes them responsible. It delves deeply into the interactions between juvenile justice and police systems at the institutional and procedural levels. It conducts a detailed inquiry into the international legal framework of juvenile justice systems. Here, it studies such systems in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to suggest the way forward for a transparent, robust and sensitive juvenile justice system in India.

Visualising Order: Photography and the Production of the Colonial Police in India

Stationed in cities, towns and villages across the Indian subcontinent, the colonial police were a ubiquitous presence under the British Raj. Visuality was central to the policing project; the police’s effectiveness was predicated on colonial subjects’ recognition of police authority. Photographs of policepersons and police buildings, appearing in manuals, histories and memoirs, private albums, imperial educational propaganda and on postcards, testify to the pervasiveness of the policing institution within the colonial landscape and the institution’s commitment to visuality. The sheer volume of these photographs invites consideration. While existing scholarship on the colonial police and photography has largely focused on how the police harnessed the medium in their efforts to visualise colonial criminals, this article considers photography as a means of producing the police to make legible the imperial social order. Various photographs of policepersons and police buildings – mundane and propagandistic images when considered within the broader history of colonial Indian photography – index imperial interactions, revealing the visual language the police relied on to assert their authority.

Book review: Tumpa Mukherjee, Women in Police in India: A Journey from Periphery to Core

Tumpa Mukherjee, Women in Police in India: A Journey from Periphery to Core. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2020, 212 pages, ₹1,095.

Book review: Police Corruption in Comparative Perspective: Building Trust in the Police in India and China

Book review: Police Corruption in Comparative Perspective: Building Trust in the Police in India and China

The Crime Vanishes: Mob Lynching, Hate Crime and Police Discretion in India

Amidst high-profile incidents of hate violence against religious and caste minorities, the Indian Supreme Court laid down a series of guidelines to address mob violence and lynching in its July 2018 Tehseen Poonawalla order. The order mandated a police supervisory structure and stronger official accountability, more stringent penal provisions, victim and witness protection, and more expansive compensation and rehabilitation schemes. It also recommended the enactment of anti-lynching legislation. This article contributes to the conversation about the order’s implementation by drawing from the empirical work conducted by Jindal Global Law School’s (JGLS) legal clinic on hate crimes. It focuses on how the police deploy their official discretion in investigating and prosecuting incidents of mob violence and lynching. First, based on detailed interviews of police officials, the article shows how the ambiguity of the category of lynching continues to plague the implementation of the order. Second, taking a case study of a potential hate crime investigation, it shows how the police structures investigations and charges to undermine the goals of criminal law. This article shows that police officials use their discretion to construct lynching — during various stages of investigation and charging — to obscure and invisibilise the crime. This quotidian exercise of discretion is shaped by broader systemic problems in India’s criminal justice system, especially its lack of independence, inadequate training, and institutional bias. The article advocates that these systemic concerns must be integrated in a meaningful response to mob lynching and hate crimes in India. In Part 2, we discuss the Tehseen Poonawalla Guidelines, specifically the background of the case, the key aspects of the Court’s directions, and the continuing evaluation of the order’s implementation. We also point out the weaknesses and ambiguities in the Court’s approach. These weaknesses appear to have been enhanced in the manner the police deploy their discretion in concrete cases. We focus on this issue in the following two parts. In Part 3, we give an account of how the police interpret the categories of lynching and mob violence based on a series of interviews with the police officers in charge of supervising and conducting investigations. These interviews reveal that despite the claims of state governments, police personnel have not evolved an operational definition of the category. Consequently, a range of background assumptions continue to filter into the manner in which the police construct lynching as a crime in concrete cases. Part 4 develops this theme further. It focuses on one case of lynching in the town of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, and studies how the police obscured the crime through the manner in which it structured the charge sheet. Part 5 attempts to situate these empirical insights in the broader literature on policing in India and suggests that any conversation around the implementation of the Guidelines must integrate the larger issues of policing culture and institutional design. Part 6 concludes that our account of police discretion illuminates the complex relationship between systemic weaknesses and the concrete context of violence. This, we argue, should direct us towards a more nuanced and comprehensive criminal law reform to address hate violence in India.

Corruption and Trust in Police: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Procedural Justice.

This article examines the role of citizens' contact with police and their assessments of officers' corruption in police in India. More importantly, we examine whether police procedural justice moderates the relationship between citizens' assessments of police corruption and trust. Data (N = 845) from Delhi, India, suggest that consistent with the literature, citizens' trust in police is explained by their contact with police, fear of crime, police effectiveness, and corruption in police work. However, two significant findings emerged from this analysis. First, though citizens' perception of police corruption is a significant explanatory variable of trust in police, procedural justice moderates the strength of the relationship of corruption on trust. Second, the nature of contact experience reveals essential differences in the moderating effect of procedural justice on the relationship between corruption and trust in police. Finally, irrespective of the nature of contact experience, police effectiveness, and trust in police is related.

Explaining citizen support for women police in India

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine citizen support for female police officers in India. More specifically, we examined the relationship of citizens’ perceptions of police effectiveness, corruption, general satisfaction with police, and contact experiences with their support for women police in India, a society that is patriarchal with strong gender role stereotypes. Findings suggest that older residents living in urban areas are supportive of more women police, but contact has no bearing on the dependent variable. Perceived corruption of the police, in general, was a strong predictor for citizen support for female police officers. However, perceived police effectiveness and satisfaction is negatively related to support for women police. It is argued that apart from expanding the strength of female police officers in all female police stations, they should also be deployed more widely in patrol functions to enhance the visibility and value of women in crime and security responsibilities.

Lacuna in Law, Aiding Colonial Policing in India? Exploring the Gross Violations from a Scratch in the Aftermath of the Tuticorin Custodial Horror

Lacuna in Law, Aiding Colonial Policing in India? Exploring the Gross Violations from a Scratch in the Aftermath of the Tuticorin Custodial Horror

Policing Violence against Women: The Indian Scenario

Abstract Policing by police is an errand difficult to be met with the rise in atrocities against the peripherals with regard to women, children, aged and minorities. Countries showing different crime statistics on violence against women cannot be spared of explanations. Whether the incidences of violence against women is showing any change is a question of concern especially taking into consideration the dark figure of crime. The present study is an attempt to analyze violence against women in India and evaluate the measures undertaken by the police in India to combat the menace in recent times.

Position of women in police in India: policy gaps and the need for gender mainstreaming

The representation of women in police organizations across India is on the rise. Yet, the role of women continues to be confined primarily to addressing and investigating crimes against women and children. Policy formulations tend to focus heavily on increasing intake of women without equal emphasis on institutional reforms needed to ensure gender equality within police organizations. This is only ghettoizing women police officers, keeping them outside the mainstream of varied experiences and legitimizing segmentation of roles based on stereotyping. This article argues for reconceptualising the role of women in policing. It first critiques key legal and policy initiatives guiding women’s recruitment and role in the police service, both at the center and across states. In this, it focuses specially on the policy of creating all-women police units, explaining how it results more in sidelining women than facilitating an equal growth of men and women. It then draws from ground research on barriers women continue to face within the organization, at all levels, to underscore the need for addressing institutional impediments. Finally, it concludes by emphasizing gender mainstreaming as a strategy for driving wider institutional reforms necessary to ensure women’s integration remains meaningful and equal.

Judicial Activism in Regulating ‘Human Rights Violations’ by Police Authorities in India

The human right violations in police’s actions (or inaction) are in the headlines, quite often in India. The fundamental freedoms guaranteedunder the Indian Constitution are often ignored during the course of such police actions, which the Judiciary in India has tried to regulate in many cases. The Supreme Court of India has laid down norms for many areas including custodial death, inhuman treatment in prisons, continued detentions in the prison after the completion of a term of imprisonment, fake encounters, unwarranted breach of the right to privacy of individuals and registering of fraudulent cases. Despite the continued efforts of the Indian Judiciary, the incidents of human right violations by the police have not abated due to two main reasons: a) the strong political influence of the police and b) theignorance of the public, who still fear the police more than anyone else. This paper addresses the topic at hand in three parts. In the first part, the paper analyses the trendsetting judicial verdicts against the violation of human rights by police in India, especially in light of the Constitutional provisions. The second part addresses the problems that are still faced despite the judicial activism in the field and elaborates on the reasons for the continuation of problems. The final part of the paper addresses thesteps that can be taken for strengthening the police reforms to prevent human right violations. It also looks into the need for necessary responses from other stakeholders in the field.

Provisional Authority. Police, Order, and Security in India. By Beatrice Jauregui. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016.

Provisional Authority. Police, Order, and Security in India. By Beatrice Jauregui. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016.For many among us the idea of police authority being anything but secure would be novel. Shored up on the one hand by the state's monopoly of force and on the other by unwavering commitment from democratically elected governments, the notion that police authority may be in some way provisional barely merits thought. Indeed, the very firmness of this presumption is reinforced and made manifest by its occasional disruption, such as in the case of the violent protests against police brutality in the United States in recent years and the concomitant rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The exception confirms the rule.My first experience of the provisionality of police authority - its contingency and conditionality - took place on a very cold and bleak afternoon in January 2005 in the city of Srinagar, Kashmir, a disputed region of Northern India. As I stood in a city street an armored police vehicle rounded the corner and came upon a car double-parked, the driver at the wheel but the car blocking the way. The scene that followed undid my understanding and presumptions about policing. First, the driver of the police vehicle honked and honked, while the car driver studiously ignored the implicit demand to move on. Second, the policeman at the wheel exited the vehicle, lathi (long baton) in hand, smashed the offending driver's window, dragged him from the car and began to beat him on the ground. Third, thinking that my presence as a westerner might in some way temper the exercise of police violence I stepped forward, making myself clearly visible on the pavement. The police officer looked up at me, then got back down to the job of beating the errant driver. As the bloodied driver was shoved back behind the wheel to clear his obstruction I walked away, chastened yet powerless.Beatrice Jauregui's Provisional Authority: Police, Order, and Security in India considers each of these phenomena as well as a host of others based on more than two years' ethnographic fieldwork with police in India's largest and in many ways most complex state, Uttar Pradesh (pop. 200 million in 2011; were it a nation state, it would be the sixth largest by population in the world). Though a relatively short book, at just 158 pages, it is remarkably dense both with ideas - reframing in important ways the way we might think about police authority - and data. On the latter, the book provides what might become a textbook example of fine ethnographic work. Jauregui is a Hindi speaker and seems also to get the rough drift of a number of minor vernacular languages. Without these skills it is difficult to imagine a work of such depth and sensitivity being achievable. Reading this book as a criminologist engaged in a project to envision a new criminology unhooked from metropolitan master discourses, I felt I was seeing unfold before me new ways of thinking and new practices of research suitable for work in the global South.Jauregui's argument concerning the provisionality of police authority in India is far too complex and multidimensional to be summarized into a nutshell here (see pp. 142-44 for her own effort to achieve such a distillation). I will instead attempt to trace the broad contours of her approach. This begins with the relationship of police to the state and a vision of police authority that is less about a Weberian probability of obedience to command, or a routinized belief in its legitimacy, and more about shifting capabilities and evaluations of the provision of 'the good' and 'the goods'. (p. 16). Though she seems at pains at a number of points to distinguish her conclusions from broad Foucauldian claims regarding power, what stuck me most here was her subtle and skilful approach to the study of police authority as a constantly shifting game in motion. Her repeated returns to the field, providing examples from her notes of the ways police, from a new recruit posted to a small thana (local station) to senior officers, as well as citizens who alternately cry for police assistance and damn their mendacity, and the politicians who valorize officers' sacrifices while playing them like chess pieces (see pp. …