Arvind Verma

Measuring police efficiency in India: an application of data envelopment analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to develop a method for measuring police efficiency.Design/methodology/approach – The design of this paper is to apply the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a comparative or relative efficiency measuring mechanism to police‐work‐related data from India. This application provides a rationale for identifying good performance practices. It helps in generating targets of performance, the optimum levels of operations, role models that inefficient departments can emulate and the extent to which improvements can be made over a period of time.Findings – The paper measures the performances of State police units in India and the results suggest ways in which some State police departments can improve their overall efficiency.Practical implications – The paper suggests ways in which the efficiency of any unit of criminal justice systems may be formulated and compared across different units of the system.Originality/value – The value is that it introduces a new tec...

Cultural roots Tucson, AZ.f police corruption in India

Corruption within the Indian police organization is not a new phenomenon and folklore has always associated police with extortion and brutality. At present, corruption exists in many forms and in every rank and has reached an alarming stage where some practices are not even considered deviant. This paper argues that such pervasive corruption is an expression of the organizational culture that has its roots in the British Raj. The paper, based upon an insider’s viewpoints, describe some unusual forms of corruption and suggest how these emanate from organizational practices that have continued unchanged for more than a 100 years.

The armed police in the British colonial tradition

The model of policing which originated in Ireland was designed to police a foreign land and is known as the colonial system. Describes the influence of the colonial model in the development of the armed police in India, used for order maintenance rather than the prevention and detection of crime. Contrasts with the Metropolitan Police system are drawn and the history of the Indian police is outlined. Although successful in protecting British commercial and political interests in the past it no longer serves the more recent needs of India, e.g. dealing with underlying social problems, allowing democratic ideals and freedom. A civilian model needs to be developed.

Spatio-temporal visualization of urban crimes on a GIS grid

We present several techniques for visualizing the temporal dimension of a Geographic Information System. Techniques include (i) pseudo-colored time-window display, (ii) side-by-side height bars, (iii) stacked time-aggregated cumulative bars, (iv) stacked order-preserving bus, (v) vertical time dimension, and (vi) multi-layered display. These techniques are presented in the context of an urban crime mapping application and extend the existing visualization techniques employed in this field. We discuss merits and demerits of the proposed and existing techniques as well as issues related to aggregating the sampled data on a grid. The graphical display and the user interface is achieved through the use of VRML and vrmlscript. Our approach highlights the efforts to combine geographic information visualization with WordWideWeb technologies.

Dimensions of police culture: a study in Canada, India, and Japan

Purpose – Some police research has used quantitative methods of typology construction in attitudinal data to explore the spatial structure of occupational culture, suggesting distinctions among officer‐types may be empirically useful. The purpose of this paper is to suggest scale construction as a complimentary approach, using original data collected from a multi‐national sample. Cultural structure is examined here in terms of the spatial relationship among variables rather than respondents. Cultural homogeneity is understood principally as the relative congruence of attitudinal constructs across national groups. Where common constructive dimensions are evident, meaningful analysis of attitudinal valence is then possible.Design/methodology/approach – Data‐measuring attitudes in several facets of occupational outlook were collected from police in Canada, India, and Japan. Factor analysis was used to identify latent structures among question items in 11 inventories in the aggregate set and then again in eac...

Does Higher Education Affect Perceptions Among Police Personnel? A Response from India

Police personnel in India are poorly educated and are notorious for extortion, misbehavior, and poor services to citizens. There is constant demand to improve their quality, but good training and performance requires better education to comprehend the demands of a democratic polity. But do better educated police personnel perceive their responsibilities differently? This research seeks to understand the impact of education on police personnel in terms of their perceptions of role, work values, stress, and management issues. Our research suggests that education makes only a marginal difference and provides evidence for a policy change in this direction.

Policing the Police

Political Violence and the Police in India. By K. S. Subramanian. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007. 264 pages. Paperback

Construction of offender profiles using fuzzy logic

29.95. The embers of politically inspired violence have burnt and threate...

Teaching Police Officers Human Rights

Although fuzzy logic is being extensively used in electronics and mathematical sciences, it has found little or no application in the social sciences, especially criminology. As a mathematical system, fuzzy logic generalizes the Boolean logic and can be a very useful tool for the social sciences where concepts and terms involve shades of meanings. Outlines the essential mathematics behind this approach and develops a technique that could be useful in building offender profiles from fuzzy descriptions provided by witnesses. Also suggests several other possible areas of applications of this mathematical system.

Maintaining Law and Order in India: An Exercise in Police Discretion

Many countries have been seeking assistance from the United Nations to improve the human rights training of their police officers. It is believed that information about human rights practices around the world, knowledge of UN guidelines, and instruction about humane police practices will help the police officers improve their treatment of suspects and arrestees. This article presents observations from teaching about human rights to a group of police officers in a North African Muslim country. In discussion, the police officers denied any violations of human rights in their country and suggested that there was no need for external advice. The examination reveals a deeper malaise; one which is prevalent in most police organisations. This study suggests that the mere provision and exposure to information is unlikely to bring about major changes in any police organisation. Despite overwhelming evidence and public knowledge of rights violations and police mal-practice, the officers maintain a spirit of self-denial. Their attitudes and actions cannot be changed by forcing them to undergo short-duration courses. What is required is an extensive change in organisational practice and police culture.