Delhi to Badaun: Criminology can counter India's rape problem

Evidence is mounting by the day that as a nation we are hardly in control over the sacred task of securing our women, both at their homes and in public places. The frequency and ferocity of attacks, mostly for sex, reported during the past few days are a clear indictment of the police and the political leadership. The recent Badaun (Uttar Pradesh) rape and murder of two Dalit girls are no less grave than the Nirbhaya atrocity (16 December 2012) in the capital more than a year ago. The decapitation of a girl in the South Garo District of Meghalaya, after she resisted a sexual assault, is another incident which should shame us more than we would ever admit. Even as brazen statements are made by some politicians who are on the mat, the media looks too confused for ideas. Let us face it. There are too many facts of the disgusting scene which are indisputable. The violence on women is no longer confined to certain parts of the country. It is too widespread to pinpoint any particular region as especially prone. [caption id=“attachment_1558709” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  PTI[/caption] No single caste or economic group that is most to blame. Rapes are both a rural and urban phenomenon. Also the enhanced deterrence of penalties post Nirbhaya hasn’t really helped. This is in tune with what many of us who have some knowledge of crime and criminals have always believed. Stiff sentences work only upto a point and only in respect of certain categories of deviance. Homicides and rapes, especially the latter, are outrages flowing from impulse. You can never prevent them. They will continue to stab at human conscience. It is not my case that you should stop looking at the law to make it more and more forbidding to the potential offender who is waiting for every conceivable opportunity to strike at an unwary or unprotected target. It is my case that ‘target hardening’, propounded by some cerebral criminologists like the venerable Ron Clarke of Rutgers University in the US, and would greatly help. We are not in the job of moralizing to delinquents to stop offending. We are very much into frustrating them in myriad ways. This is no single foolproof method that would ensure total elimination of rapes and murders. There is no single silver bullet that can succeed. There are many tactics (and not woolly strategy) that can pay rich dividends. Criminology may not be a perfect science. But it definitely gives us ideas, some of which are practical and workable, and many others not. Even as I say that I have lost faith in the ability of the Indian Police to prevent crime, I can confidently take the position that a measure of intelligent policing based on hard research and its application could bring a qualitative improvement to policing a complex country such as ours. Some of us led by Prof.Larry Sherman of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology meet annually to wrestle with the crime problem on the field. The forum, styled an Evidence-based Policing conference, listens to researchers and police professionals on how to handle crime, especially violent ones. The latter are men and women who do not speak out of thin air, but on the basis of evidence derived from their experiments passing the strict test of the best in academic research. Deriving inspiration from the many that I have heard, I am emboldened to say that we can make our general administration and our policemen more focused on the task of reducing assaults on women by conducting rigorous research and drawing from its concrete findings. To do this, we first need a centralized database fed by all police forces in the country in respect of rapes. The National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB) in Delhi, which is under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), does collect annual figures and produces a general analysis in terms of age, occupation, region, etc., of all offenders brought to book. In my view, this is too general an evaluation for drawing up a blueprint of action. Hard research is called for by each police force on all rapes reported to them it so that it is able to unravel a pattern out of them. Anything else will be of no avail. A systematic study of all rapes reported in the country and a sharing of its findings at a national conference hosted by the MHA could help to draw lessons for practical action. The present conference of DGPs held each year by the IB is a meaningless ritual, almost a jamboree, where tea and coffee flow freely and not ideas for implementation. I am amazed that the whole issue of rapes is looked upon as a mere police problem. The role of the general administration is hardly mentioned even in passing. For instance, an improvement in street lighting is considered the world over as a deterrent to crime of all kinds. This has not received the attention it deserves. Allied is the problem of providing exclusive toilets for women which are well lit and protected. One can add several suggestions to these as a way we can make the crime more difficult to commit. All this may sound too mundane and trivial. But then great challenges to mankind are known to have been met from such rudimentary beginnings. The writer is a former CBI Director)