Coping with crime

Published : Mar 25, 2011 00:00 IST

WOMEN MEMBERS OF Parliament protesting in front of Parliament House against the inaction of the Delhi Police, following the rape in the city of a girl from north-eastern India, on December 1, 2010. Crimes against women registered a 4 per cent increase in 2009 compared with the previous year. - V.V. KRISHNAN

WOMEN MEMBERS OF Parliament protesting in front of Parliament House against the inaction of the Delhi Police, following the rape in the city of a girl from north-eastern India, on December 1, 2010. Crimes against women registered a 4 per cent increase in 2009 compared with the previous year. - V.V. KRISHNAN

In the absence of alternative and more trustworthy statistics, government databases give a reasonable indication of trends in crime.

I AM just back from SASTRA University, Thanjavur, where I spoke on how technology is used for committing crime and, ironically, solving it as well. At the end of the hour-long talk, the audience of extremely sharp and knowledgeable students shot off several questions, which left one thinking how crime had become an inextricable part of modern life and how even the younger generation was extremely exercised about it.

A few days earlier, I was at the National Police Academy, Hyderabad, taking part in a training programme for Indian Police Service (IPS) officers with about 10 to 15 years of work experience. Many of the participants raised philosophical questions about the conflict between good and evil, especially whether the ends justified the means in day-to-day police routine.

Specifically, the topic of the police using extralegal methods to solve crime came up for animated debate in the context of the infamous encounters reported from different parts of the country. I know I did not sound wholly convincing when I said that in all my 38 years of policing, I stood for humane treatment of suspects and that I put my foot down on what is popularly known as the third degree, which is equivalent to torture. The officers present at the programme were not sure that my example was relevant to current times, when crime had become a menace, especially to women and children.

The two occasions reinforced my feeling that educating the community on matters pertaining to crime has become an essential chore of police leaders if they want to make the police more acceptable to the people. Such a conscious effort would help enhance police credibility, which is much talked about just now. The recent move of the police in the United Kingdom to allow the public online access to crime maps is what I have in mind. Such maps would tell one whether the crime rate in one's locality was high or low and whether one needed to take security measures.

It is against this backdrop that one should examine whether crime in the country is bad enough for people to be paranoid about it. Is crime on the increase or has it remained at the same level for years, of course, with a few marginal fluctuations? Traditionally, there are two ways to measure crime. While one is inexact and rests solely on perceptions, the other depends heavily on the crime statistics put out by the government.

The two do not always complement each other and are actually at variance most of the time. While the former tends to be negative and subjective, official reports of the incidence of crime tend to play down the phenomenon.

Crime in India 2009, the annual publication of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs released earlier this year, gives one a lot of food for thought on various facets of crime. Sceptics generally dismiss compilations of this kind on the grounds that they mask the inefficiency of law enforcement agencies and are not exercises in transparency to instruct the citizen on the exact state of crime.

My view, which is in sync with criminologists the world over, is that in the absence of an alternative and more trustworthy measure of crime one can go by government databases. This is especially true in India because the country is yet to launch a full-fledged, scientifically devised victimisation survey of the kind that both the United States and the U.K. have that would fill in gaps left by reports like Crime in India.

To cite what may seem to be a hilarious analogy, it is like health maniacs using different weighing machines because no scale is accurate and satisfactory to them. But one must remember that even when one uses a faulty machine, if one sticks with it, variations over time can be looked upon as a fairly reliable measure of how one is doing on the health front.

This is why Crime in India (www.ncrb.nic.in) needs to be viewed with all seriousness. The numerous tables in it are particularly educative because they go back in time, sometimes to 1953, when an attempt was made for the first time to put figures collected from all over the country on to paper and make sense out of them.

What does Crime in India 2009 tell us? In 2009, there was a 12.4 per cent increase over the previous year in the total number of cognisable crimes. The crime rate (number of offences per 100,000 of the population) grew by 11 per cent. It stood at 571. This is a trend that should be a matter for worry.

However, the acknowledgement that crime is indeed rising is an indication of the slightly greater transparency that now characterises the process of registering reported crime. I do not for a moment suggest that most of the occurrences are being brought on record. I am only saying that the higher figure is somewhat commensurate with the increase in population. There have been years in the past when the rise was so marginal that it baffled even the most uninformed observer, who was convinced that large-scale suppression of crime data was going on unchecked.

Offences registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) showed an increase of 20 per cent, 3 per cent higher than in the case of offences under Special and Local Laws (such as the Explosives Act, the Arms Act, the Information Technology Act, the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances Act, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, the Prohibition Act, and so on). Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai accounted for a bulk of the cases registered under the IPC.

Violent crime

What should cause one the greatest concern are trends in the areas of violent crime (murder and its attempt, causing grievous injury, robbery and rapes) and victimisation of women and children. Of course, one cannot ignore the contemporary phenomenon of cyber crime that is likely to replace conventional crime, at least partially, in a decade or so. I would be surprised if this did not happen because computer penetration is growing even in rural areas. One must also concede that physical attacks on residential premises with a view to stealing property is less of a problem these days because of the increase in the number of gated communities and because apartments are being protected with the help of private security guards.

Violent crime accounted for about 10 per cent of all IPC crime during 2009. The fall compared with the previous year was too marginal to merit attention. There were 32,369 homicides and 29,038 attempted homicides in 2009. Interestingly, the average number of murders in the past five years is also about 32,000. The number of thefts attended with violence was 22,409.

Crimes against women (rape, kidnapping, sexual harassment, dowry death, and so on) numbered about 200,000, representing a 4 per cent increase over the previous year. Of these, 21,397 were rapes, nearly as many as in the previous year. (Delhi alone accounted for 25 per cent of these.) Apart from the fact that the number of cases is at an unacceptable level, the relatively young age of the victims is galling. It is shocking that 11.5 per cent of them were under 15 years and 16 per cent were in the age group of 15 to 18. Incest rapes were as many as 321. The recent arrest of an MLA in Maharashtra who violated a girl after promising her a job is a classic illustration of girls from the lower strata of society being particularly vulnerable.

The 2.6 per cent rise in the number of dowry deaths (2,383) is also of equal concern. Basic to all these trends is the continued poor prosecution of the accused in all cases where women and young girls are victims. The Aarushi case raises many relevant issues that may never be resolved and is certainly symptomatic of the problems the police have on hand. Improving the quality of investigation is an issue that can hardly be overemphasised.

The Indian Police's track record of investigating crime is a mixed bag of successes and failures, as well as glory and ignominy. Some very difficult cases have been solved the Rajiv Gandhi assassination, for instance and a few relatively less complicated ones such as the Aarushi murder remain too much of a mystery for the investigator.

One undisputed fact is that criminal investigation is a low priority for many police forces. As long as protection of dignitaries remains a dominant part of police work and democratic institutions remain bogged down in partisan prejudices and settling personal scores, the police will not be able to give their undivided attention to preventing and detecting crime.

It is the community at large that should rise in protest against this undeserved neglect of the sacred task of protecting citizens, especially women, children and the elderly. Having women police chiefs and women police squads is at best a tokenism that does not impress the average consumer of police services.

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