A recent spate of violent crimes against women in northern India has led to increased scrutiny of the Indian police force. In Delhi, after the gang rape and subsequent death of a young woman, residents called for the resignation of the city’s chief of police and the retraining of the overwhelmingly male police force.
But perhaps the question that should be asked about India’s police officers is whether there are enough of them in the first place.
On the basis of police per capita, India is the second lowest among 50 countries ranked by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, using 2010 data. Police forces around the world are commonly measured as the number of police per 100,000 people, and India has 129. Only Uganda fares worse.
While this ratio has increased significantly in India over the last decade, it remains far behind many other major economies. (The worldwide average is closer to 350).
Scotland, for example, has around 330 officers per 100,000; South Africa had 327, the United States had 238 officers, and Canada had 201, according to 2011 data.
Not surprisingly, some studies suggest that adding police officers reduces crime. “A nation with a larger proportion of police officers is somewhat more likely to have a lower crime rate,” said a 2006 report by the Institute for the Study of Civil Society, which looked at law enforcement data from European countries.
Just weeks before the gang rape in New Delhi on Dec.16, the Indian Supreme Court laid down guidelines to check sexual harassment, including greater deployment of female police officers in public spaces:
All states and Union Territories are directed to depute plain-clothed female police officers in the precincts of bus-stands and stops, railway stations, metro stations, cinema theatres, shopping malls, parks, beaches, public service vehicles, places of worship to monitor and supervise incidents of sexual harassment.
But, without significant increase in hiring, that may be difficult. The number of female police constables in the country was only 84,479 out of 1,585,117 officers, or about 5 percent of the total police force in 2011.
India’s judiciary is also considered understaffed. The country’s judge-to-population ratio would be the fourth lowest in the world, if the country were included in a 2008 U.N. study that looked at 65 countries. Only Guatemala, Nicaragua and Kenya had a lower ratio than India, which only had 14 judges per million population in 2008.
India Ink: India's Police Force Lags Much of World
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India Ink: India's Police Force Lags Much of World
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India Ink: India's Police Force Lags Much of World
