Public participation and cost-effective policing

Policing in Bangladesh has thus always faced a crisis of legitimacy. The public perceives the police as cruel, callous and corrupt while the police regard the public as illegitimate. This is a natural outcome not only of the colonial past but also of a tendency on part of successive dictatorial regimes to deviate from 'due process' to perpetuate their power. The legal principle of rule of law, which gives the practical expression to citizen's rights and obligations and determines the style of policing, is the first casualty.

Integrated approach and cost effectiveness
Experts in law enforcement are of the considered view that an integrated system envisaging multi-agency approach and broad-based consultation can radically change public perception of police performance, improve police morale, reduce fear of crime, and incidents of violence and create an environment congenial for effective interest identification, interest formulation, and interest integration.

The police are responsible for the protection of life, liberty and property of citizens. For the performance of this basic function the resources of the police, in advanced countries, have always been quite substantial. Computerised data-bases covering a large variety of policing functions, especially incident logging, control and command operations, automatic fingerprint recognition with the ability to make a million comparisons in hours, helicopters and various types of photographic and video equipment are used by the police forces in these countries. Voluntary public resource-input has supplemented budgetary allocations.

The police in Bangladesh, on the other hand, suffer from the limitations arising out of resource-constraints. Resource inadequacy, large population and budgetary constraints characterise the economy of the country. Not only is there a huge public debt and the concomitant debt servicing draining out the niggardly resources available with the exchequer, there is also rampant corruption found all over the country.

Bangladesh economy does not have the benefit of buoyancy. Naturally, the cost of controlling crime and conducting investigations is colossal. Thus there is a need for not only a substantial increase in the budgetary allocation for the police but also adding it to the resource-input of the community. The development of the community's self-policing role ensures cost-effective policing because it augments limited police resources. Thus the addition of the community's resources to police resources definitely reduces the burden on the public exchequer and makes the concept of police performance commensurate with the value for money thereby reducing overall policing costs a reality.

Public involvement
The cause of crime are complex and multifarious. Everyone agrees that the criminal justice system (comprising the police, courts, prison and probation services, and the prosecution), on its own cannot hope to succeed in reversing the upward trend in crime figures. The underlying causes of crime lie within society itself, and therefore, if the concern of the public can be transferred into positive action then much can be achieved.

Within the criminal justice system, the police are basically responsible for the prevention and detection of crime implying, of course, the protection of life and property and the preservation of public peace. The perform these functions in accordance with the fundamental principles of 'consent and balance' and 'independence and accountability', police forces in advanced countries have evolved strategies ensuring close involvement of the public in their crime control functions. This is so because information flowing from the public to the police is of vital importance in the crime solving function of policing. If adequate information is provided to pinpoint the culprit fairly accurately, the crime will be resolved. This is borne out by various studies, whether conducted by observation, analysis of records or both.

Public and crime solving
Experience indicates that a high proportion of crimes are solved immediately because either the offenders were caught in the act, or were still at the scene of the crime when the police arrived, or their identity was given to the police by the victim or a witness. Of the rest, a high proportion was cleared up through questioning of offenders who admit other offences to be 'taken into consideration'. It is often found that the majority of offenders are detected in circumstances that do not involve the exercise of detective skills.

The benefit of many studies convince us that where the community is supportive, police requests for members of the public who saw the incident concerned, or 'saw anything suspicious' to come forward, can be expected to yield results. It such a community the close relationship between the police and the public as regards the sharing of information and thus the likelihood of successful detection act as a deterrent to the potential criminal. After the event, it is the same close sharing of information that will lead investigative policing to a likely successful conclusion. The more the information the more the police can begin their investigation 'following actual leads and the less the recourse to stereotypes becomes the basis for starting investigation'.

Experience in UK
In UK, since the adoption of 'policing by objectives' strategy, the tendency in the police forces of England and Wales to give prominence to crime prevention through public involvement and community-based policing in setting goals and objectives has been clearly discernible. This approach is backed at an institutional level by 'multi-agency' policing, crime prevention panels, and other police-initiated forums where the community's self-policing role has been developed. In addition, many forces, particularly the London Metropolitan Police in the early 80s, had also seen 'a greater media profile, with an enlargement of public relations department and the use of videos and glossy materials to get the police message across'.

Holistic approach and our problems
The 'multi-agency' approach involves police collaboration with other agencies, 'social, economic, cultural and educational' to develop solutions which address the root causes rather than the symptoms of crime.

The assumption is that through better understanding of all the facts of any type of anti-social behaviour, the community, including the police, should be able to produce constructive, co-operative ventures to prevent or reduce the phenomenon, thus avoiding costly reactive policing.

In Bangladesh there is a conflict and hostility between the police and the public. The reasons are not hard to find. When the people are fighting for realisation of constitutional goals, the police are used to subjugate them. Our police are police without consent.

Failure of the political institutions to develop in the aftermath of independence and breakdown of the system at short intervals did not create conditions conducive for the legitimacy of the police. The situation, more or less, remains the same today. The community does not support the police because it sees them socially and politically oppressive and in no way fulfilling a protective role.

The flow of information from the community to the police is most often activity aimed at obtaining information, comes to be regarded as the random harassment of the community at large, irrespective of involvement in crime. For efficiency, the necessary information has to be extracted out of the community, often by force. This is done by the field officers either through a network of 'paid informers', payments being made out of money extracted from parties always willing to pay bribes to harass their opponents through the agency of the police or high profile activities such as stopping people randomly in the streets, raiding premises, taking people in for questioning, not on the basis of information already received, but as part of an attempt to secure information. This stop and search method creates deterrence and gives information at the expense of public alienation.

The desired course
In Bangladesh the pressure to solve crime is indeed very great. In the absence of effective community policing or crime prevention through the willing co-operation of the public, smooth flow of information is replaced by arbitrariness. The result is unscientific investigation and random use of preventive section of the law. The objective condition in Bangladesh encourage the police personnel to ignore the need for a open and co-operative attitude towards the public. In fact, our police have become 'marginalised' from the community.

Since large financial outlays for policing expenditure will not be forthcoming in the years to come, Bangladesh police should be in constant need for reviewing its concepts and its operational techniques. However, in the ultimate analysis, police cannot cope effectively with crime without the willing and conscientious co-operation of the public at large.

To enlist public support for police operations is not an easy task, especially because of the long-standing reservations about the honesty and efficiency of the police. Community policing may be desirable because it is a condition for success but is not an alternative to law enforcement. A visible effectiveness of police actions and sharing of aspirations between the police and the community for curbing crime would be necessary. The police, on their part, must also identify themselves with the community's thinking.

It has to be admitted that police resources are finite and therefore, too heavy a reliance on police power to solve basic social problems is unwise. In fact, policing in a democratic society has to seek a fresh ethical basis and come to rest on a form of social contract between the police and the public.

For cost effective policing in Bangladesh, public identification with police tasks has to be facilitated for ensuring a greater degree of police responsiveness to public demands. One cannot ignore the positive outcome of the addition of the resources of the community to the meagre resources of the police. The intertwined perception and action of the police and the public will result in cost-effective policing which is a basic requirement of resource-poor economies like Bangladesh.

Muhammad Nurul Huda is a former Secretary and IGP.