For better tools

The recent conference on evidence-based policing at Cambridge throws up new ideas on mapping crimes such as burglary and domestic violence.

We are going to make the police more visible, more available, and more accountable to the public you [the police] serve, then we have to go beyond these changes. We have to look again at the driver of all this bureaucracy, and that is the top-down model of accountability imposed on police by government.

Theresa May, U.K. Home Secretary, on June 30 at the conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers in the U.K.

One public service that more than any other is under constant public scrutiny is the police force. This is not merely because the police charter is vital to order and stability within the community, but also because a variety of external forces determine what the police can do and cannot. The general impression created is that the police are underperforming all the time. At the same time, police services are too broad and extremely contentious.

The influences that impinge on police functioning include, inter alia, the limits set by the law and the injunctions of the judiciary which interprets such law. This is why a performance audit of the police should be objective and professional, and should take into account the severe constraints against innovation fused into the system. While expectations from the police are enormous, the tools available to the police to fulfil them are severely limited. If in spite of this claustrophobic ambience, the police show a willingness to change their methods of operation, it is because of social scientists like Larry Sherman and Ron Clarke.

Larry Sherman is a professor with the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University, and Ron Clarke is a professor at Rutgers University. Both of them have brought to bear upon the police some bright ideas that help counter criminality, especially in crime-prone localities. I have had the good fortune of getting to know them and learnt how police officers can shake off the shackles imposed by tradition on crime-control measures. Police officers are assessed invariably on the basis of their success on this front.

While Larry Sherman is known for his experiments in evidence-based policing, Ron Clarke's situational crime prevention strategy stands on principles, such as target hardening, that make thefts and burglaries harder to commit.

Larry Sherman moved to Cambridge a few years ago after building a formidable reputation for himself, first at the University of Maryland, College Park, and later at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In Cambridge, he has now assembled an international group that specialises in experiments seeking to prove how methodical studies of crime in locations that are notorious for criminal activity can yield positive results.

This has spawned an annual conference on evidence-based policing, at which both practitioners and academics engage in brainstorming over patterns of crime and how police organisations should adapt themselves to such patterns through sustained application and structural changes. In a way, this get-together of some of the outstanding minds in criminal justice builds bridges between academics and practitioners.

The third session of this conference was held in July in Cambridge. It attracted papers on subjects ranging from the conflict between dogma and evidence to predicting harmful conduct, particularly domestic violence. The role of statistics in measuring police performance was also discussed in the context of the universal lack of faith in crime figures dished out by government agencies.

The conference was held against the backdrop of the new Conservative government's proposal to cut costs across the country. It is widely apprehended that this will mean a drastic reduction in police manpower, although some of my police friends in the United Kingdom do not subscribe to this fear. They feel that the 43 police forces in England and Wales may cut down services and not opt for retrenchment of existing personnel.

The manpower is already just optimal and accretions, unlike in India, are hard to win from local police authorities. At its annual conference held in late June, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in the country, a government-sanctioned body that has a lot of say on police policy, voiced its concern at this possibility. The ACPO members were also exercised over the Conservative plan to install an elected functionary at the head of each force. Possibly called commissioner, this individual will be accountable to the community for quality policing.

This innovation is based on the premise that the existing system of oversight by a local police authority is only a half-way measure that does not promote fully police accountability. Many feel that this experiment is fraught with dangers, because it could inject crass politics into day-to-day policing of the variety one sees in India. The ACPO was equally concerned over Home Secretary Theresa May's statement at its June conference that targets (for reducing crime) did not actually bring down crime. This position cuts at the root of police belief that unless targets are set, police effectiveness cannot be measured with reasonable accuracy. Ironically, one of the subjects discussed at the Cambridge University conference was how to measure trust and confidence in the police.

Successive governments in the country have relied heavily on the British Crime Survey (BCS) there is nothing similar in India to understand how people rate the police in terms of crime control. This faith in the BCS is not necessarily because it is a true indicator of the levels of crime. The BCS is only a convenient tool to philosophise on policing. And it has obvious limitations, one of which is the honesty of responses, an infirmity that goes with many public opinion surveys.

Larry Sherman spoke at the conference on how to convince policy-makers that field experiments on crime bear results that are worth taking note of. An instance in point is the eternal doubt over the utility of punishments and the prison system. His stand, which many other criminal justice scholars and practitioners endorse, is that if imprisonment worked, we should have less and less crime. In reality, however, except for short periods and that too in select locations, crime keeps climbing in variety and in numbers. The average politician, however, goes on clamouring for longer prison terms and more prisons to take care of overcrowding.

Every government wants to project itself as tough on crime, unwilling to concede that longer sentences seldom act as a deterrent. This is why I am amused when legislators in India want death for rape and other equally obnoxious crimes. There also needs to be the realisation that imprisonment promotes criminal behaviour on the part of those incarcerated for petty crimes and non-violent offences. It is time to convince policymakers in India that one way of avoiding prison overcrowding is to lock up fewer of those individuals who do not pose a danger to society and that delinquent behaviour can be tackled successfully through community service and similar penalties. The basic premise here is that we are not getting value for the money spent on prisons. The United States is about the worst offender in this respect.

Predicting criminal behaviour is a difficult and hazardous venture. Crime is often, if not always, an impulsive act. Studies on domestic violence, a universal phenomenon, have however revealed that it is eminently predictable. When a police agency receives complaints from the same home frequently, it highlights the possibility that a mild quarrel between spouses can end up in serious crime. What is required here is painstaking record keeping. If this is done with scrupulous care, one can categorise individuals involved in domestic high-handedness as high- and low-risk and take appropriate follow-up action.

Another example is the ease with which burglary can be predicted. Houses low in security or those that have suffered repeated intrusions belong to the high-risk category and can be focussed for police attention. Professor Ken Pease, an authority on the subject, told the Cambridge conference that burglars who were questioned by the police admitted that it was easier to concentrate on the same premises repeatedly for breaking in because of expert knowledge obtained on its vulnerabilities.

This brings me to crime mapping, a hot topic among many police officers engaged in fighting crime on the field. Crime maps highlight hot spots, which deserve more police attention than other places. Such maps have become so sophisticated that they now yield extremely analytical information in terms of dates, time, venues and modus operandi of criminal activities. They are useful to a variety of people, including insurance companies. Real estate agents, of course, do not like crime maps because they highlight the negative features of a locality.

In the U.S., the average citizen now demands crime maps so that he/she can take adequate precautions. Police officers are not exactly receptive to such demands. One speaker at the Cambridge conference said that giving such maps to citizens should form part of the police service.

On the whole, the Cambridge conference was a rewarding experience. The only criticism of its format could be that it was so heavily oriented to the West that an Asian scholar or practitioner could feel slightly out of place.