Community Policing in Trichy: Necessity, Implementability and Scalability in the Indian Context

India, as a country has a very pathetic police:public ratio with a measured ratio of 0.95 police per person in the year 2000. With the Indian population comprising of a wide range of religions, huge income disparity among the living population and appalling living conditions for a large percentage of the population, especially the ones living below the poverty line, the population is prone to petty larceny, burglaries and also crimes.

The communities in India have lost faith in the police and their ability to disburse justice.

Quoting an article from TOI

“More than four new offenders are added every minute to further burden our(already slow) criminal justice system. Statistics show that the crime rate is on the rise in the megacities, putting under threat our engines of fast economic growth. We have one of the lowest police to population ratio in the world…this ratio is declining over the years and hence the percentage of cases investigated by the police is declining steadily. “

In this context, it becomes very important to strengthen the existing justice disbursing mechanism and what better way than involving the local community in policing their own habitation. Community Policing could be the possible solution to overcoming the adverse public police ratio and the strain on resources while building our confidence in the police system.

Community Policing has been experimented with in a few places in India, the prominent example of which can be seen in Tirchurappalli, popularly known as Trichy. Through the introduction of novel initiatives with the help of Community, Government Agencies, NGOs, Elected Representatives and other social bodies, they were able to introduce novel concepts to improve the crime scenario in the town. Beat officer’s system, Complaint Box/Suggestions Box introduction and setting up helplines through public support were some of the new community policing initiatives that saw the light of day.

What we plan to do during the course of this project is to look at

1)   Different novelties that were implemented during the scheme

2)   Why/What made these novelties work?

3)   Did the schemes work and how could they have been better implemented?

4)   What are the triggers required for involving local communities in Community Policing?

5)   Educating societies in the need for such initiatives and increasing confidence in the Police/Indian Justice system

6)   How are they scalable and implementable in other locations in the country?

7)   Any variations that have been seen in India and their implementations

Any feedback or input on the same is welcome in the comments section. If you happen to know similar such initiatives, we would like to hear about the same.

Balijepalli Saranya & Aditya S