Honing skills of the force with evidence-based policing

I am just back from a conference on Evidence-Based Policing (EBP) hosted by the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. This is an annual event that attracts academia as well as past and serving police officers from all over the world. This year’s meet was enlivened by the presence of no less than Sir Bernard Hogan Howe, the distinguished Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (known to us as Scotland Yard), and London. He made an inspired speech outlining the Met’s problems. And it has indeed many. London’s diversity — the city of 8 million is home to people who speak as many as 300 languages — and a Conservative government which was voted to office on a pledge to cut down police expenditure. While the Met hasn’t suffered any major cuts, the rest of the 42 forces in England and Wales have had to prune their manpower rather drastically. The Cambridge EBP conference always addresses the theme of how to get the best out of a shrinking budget. In an ideal world, because of its critical role in maintaining peace and order in society, the police should get whatever resources they demand. In the real world however they get much less, because of the universal fiscal difficulties.

EBP is somewhat akin to modern medical research. We are constantly plagued by the spectre of newer and newer diseases. 

Prof Lawrence Sherman, who heads the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, is a cerebral advocate of EBP. Often regarded as the father of EBP, he is an outstanding salesman if one goes by the growing number of policemen who are willing to listen to him with great respect, and adopt whatever he preaches. (The Master’s Programme in Applied Criminology at the Institute draws a large number of students from the British Police and as far away as Australia, Canada and even Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean.)

EBP is built on the slogan of three Ts — Targeting, Testing and Tracking. Two broad strands are usually associated with this style of policing. The first: study sites of crime intelligently and apply police resources mostly to ‘hot spots’ like points in a police jurisdiction that report high incidence of crime. For instance, in every city there are spots notorious for the mugging of law-abiding citizens. There are others where burglaries are frequent. The process of making sense out of crime incidents is facilitated by ‘crime mapping’. Computers produce a bewildering variety of maps that highlight distinctive features of the crime scene in a particular locale. The second theme projected by EBP goes a little beyond the mechanical application of police resources. If 10 policemen are posted to a problem area, how do the police top brass sitting at their headquarters ensure that they get the best out of each of the personnel deployed? If patrolling has to be effective, a police supervisor should have the facility of a remote control system that satisfies him that every patrolman in his team operates optimally. A recent EBP experiment, in at least one UK Police force, has thrown up ideas on how to take advantage of unutilised patrolling capacity.

Fundamental to all this is the belief that policing could be much ‘smarter’ than it is today.

It is all too well known that the Indian police are insensitive to law-enforcement styles in the Western world. What is of concern are visible signs of resistance to learning from experiences elsewhere. I also discern a certain indifference to professionalism on the plea that in any case an ever-meddling politician frustrates objective policing. Such an attitude suppresses the fact that, barring a few cases, fighting crime is an apolitical exercise which needs optimism, skill and an application of mind and energy. In my view, evidence-based policing offers an avenue of opportunities to enhance an otherwise battered police image.

The writer is a former CBI Director