Policing Models - A Comparative Study of PDF
Policing Models - A Comparative Study of PDF
Policing Models - A Comparative Study of PDF
Abstract
Policing is one of the most important of the functions undertaken by the every
sovereign government. For the state machinery, police is an inevitable organ
which would ensure maintenance of law and order, and also the first link in the
criminal justice system. On the other hand, for common man, police force is a
symbol of brute force of authority and at the same time, the protector from crime.
Police men get a corporate identity from the uniform they wear; the common man
identifies, distinguishes and awes him on account of the same uniform. The
police systems across the world have developed on a socio cultural background,
and for this reason alone huge differences exist between these police systems.
From the singular coordinated centralised system of police in Saudi Arabia
organised under the Ministry of Interior to the 42000 odd police forces that exist
in USA, policing mainly rests on either of the two broad principles: (1) Policing by
consent and (2) Policing by law.
This paper tries to examine the various police systems that exist in the world,
taking Saudi Arabia, China, France, Spain, United Kingdom, the United States of
America and India, as examples of various types of policing models. The paper
takes cue from these systems, their positives and negatives, and tries to find out
how the Indian System, can be understood in the light of these policing models.
Police Structure: A Comparative Study of Policing Models 1
John Varghese2
The role of a modern police organisation is laid down succinctly in the above
quote appearing in the web page of UK Home Office.The first idea that comes to
our mind when we hear the term “Police” is the idea of a dominant personality
who symbolizes the power of the State and criminal justice administration
system. On the one hand people view police as a protector of civil liberties and
on the other hand police is viewed as a symbol of brute force of state which
oppresses the legitimate protests with force.
Role of Police:
1 Modification of a paper presented by author in seminar on Police Reforms in the light
of draft Kerala Police Act, 2008, Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala
India on November 24-25, 2009.
2 Assistant Professor, Government Law College, Kozhikode, 673 012,
[email protected]
3 UK Home Office Website, http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/ accessed at 7.09 pm
on 23/11/09.
4 Henry M Wrobleski et al “An Introduction to the Law Enforcement and Criminal
Justice”, 6th Edition, Wasdworth, 2000, at p.126 quoting, Manning (1997, pp.20-23).
The role of police is to address all sorts of problems when and in so far as their
solutions do or possibly require the use of force at the point of their occurrence.
Manning remarks that “...policing is an exercise in symbolic demarking of what is
immoral, wrong and outside the boundaries of acceptable conduct. It represents
the state, morality and standards of civility and decency by which we judge
ourselves5. “
Police is viewed as fulfilling the following roles in social life:
• A watchman
• A Law Enforcer
• A Service Provider
Authority of Police:
The authority of police comes from the people- their laws and institutions. Police
agencies are not only part of the community but also part f the government,
which determine their formal base of authority and of criminal justice system,
which determines society’s course in deterring lawbreakers and rehabilitating
offenders. In a Constitutional system, the ultimate authority springs from the
Constitution itself. The authority of police in every jurisdiction is derived from the
sovereign authority- it could be either the Constitution which gives the elected
government executive authority over the subjects or the “grund norm” which
gives the sovereign authority over its subjects devoid of any written constitution.
5 Id. at p 127.
6 Supra Note 1 at p 174
In this model classification is based on two dimensions:
A. Number of forces to be commanded: If the entire police force in the country
is organised as a single force under a single commander, the model is called
Singular model, and if in a single country, there are a number of police forces,
like in India, it is called “Multiple model”. Inside the multiple model, if the polices
forces have well defined territories of functioning and their functions do not
overlap each other, the model is called Multiple Coordinated, if the case is
reverse as in India, where many agencies can have overlapping jurisdictions, it is
called Multiple Uncoordinated.
B. Type of forces: If the police forces in a country is highly organised and having
a centralised command, it is called Coordinated Centralised police force, and if
the police forces in a country do not have an apparent centralised command
structure, it is called “decentralised command structure”.
While this is the general picture of policing in Saudi Arabia, there are
jurisdictional pockets of tribal authority in Saudi Arabia, which is beyond the
reach of even the King’s justice. In the tribal pockets, the tribal elders are a law
unto themselves and they do not entertain the interference of any external
authorities. So law and order or criminal investigation issues in these pockets are
undertaken by the tribal elders themselves, with the regular police giving tactical
support wherever required.
One important feature of Saudi Police System is that the line distinguishing the
Saudi Regular Armed forces and Police is very narrow and many a times the
policing functions are amply supported by Saudi National guard and the armed
forces7.
2. China: China is another model of Singular Coordinated Centralised police
force. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) is a functional organization under the
State Council in charge of public security work nationwide. Public security
departments are set in provinces and autonomous regions; metropolitan public
security bureaus are set in direct municipalities; public security bureaus or
divisions are assigned to cities and prefectures; sub-bureaus are set in sub-
regions of cities, under the direct leadership of their superior public security
agencies; public security bureaus are set in counties and banners, under the
leadership of their respective local government and superior public security
agencies. Dispatched police stations are directly subordinate to their superior
public security bureaus and sub-bureaus in counties and banners.
6. United States of America: There’s no national police force in the US, where
policing is organised on a state and local basis. The country has around 500,000
police officers and a total of 40,000 separate police forces, over half of which are
simply one or two-man sheriffs’ offices in small towns. In addition to regular full-
time police officers, many towns have auxiliary, part-time police officers, special
duty and volunteer sheriff’s posses (which assist sheriffs’ offices in some areas).
7. Police in India: India tops the number of Police men in the world countries
with 1,032,960 police personnel. USA has the second largest police force in the
world with 941,139 police officers. UK and France come 9 th and 10th respectively.
However considering the population of the country, India has only 0.956207 per
1,000 people and comes 47th in the world countries, while, UK with 2.04871 per
1,000 people stands at 34th position.
Indian model of police organisation is an example for a multiple unorganised
decentralised policing. In sharp contrast to the British principle of policing by
consent, India follows policing by law. Each state has its own police force, whose
top echelons are filled by officers of Indian Police Service, which is a central
service. Many analysts have commented that the Indian Police Act, 1861, which
was brought into force immediately after the First War of Indian Independence in
1857 was based on distrust of Indian officials and was aimed at ensuring strict
control over the Indian population. Even after attaining independence, successive
governments did not try to change this basic character of Indian Police force.
Though the framers of the Indian Constitution envisaged police as a state
subject, vide Article 246 read with entries I & 2 of List II of Seventh Schedule of
Indian Constitution, most Indian states opted to adopt the Indian Police Act, 1861
10 “POLIS - Policing OnLine Information System”,
http://polis.osce.org/countries/details?item_id=36 accessed at 5.04 pm, 23/11/2009.
11 “POLIS - Policing OnLine Information System”,
http://polis.osce.org/countries/details?item_id=69 accessed at 5.07 pm, 23/11/2009.
without any change, while the very few states, including Kerala which opted for
Police Act of its own, modeled its statute broadly based on the Indian Police Act,
1861 itself. Even the model Police Act, 2008 does not have any basic difference
from the philosophy of Indian Police Act, 1861.
The quasi-federal character of the Indian polity, with specific provisions in the
Constitution, allows a coordinating and counseling role for the Centre in police
matters and even authorizes it to set up certain central police organisations.
The head of the police force in each state is the Director General of Police (DGP)
-responsible to the state government for the administration of the police force in
each state, and for advising the government on police matters. The DGP
represents the highest rung in the police hierarchy.
Section 3 of the Police Act, 1861 vested the superintendence of the state police
force in the state government.
A system of dual control at the district level is introduced under Sec.4 of Indian
Police Act, 1861. It places the police forces under the District Superintendent of
Police, but subject to the “general control and direction” of the District Magistrate.
The draft Police Act, 2008 apparently tries to change this dual control.
Ancient Police system in India was based on the principle of local responsibility
and mutual cooperation. In the village, security and peace was a matter of
collective responsibility and shared by every resident of the village. One of the
villages, called, gramneta or village watchman is responsible to protect the
village from the criminals while the body corporate of the village was bound to
make good the loss due to crime committed within the village limits, except in
cases where they were able to trace the offenders or succeeded in fixing
responsibility of crime upon neighboring villages. 13 This village level responsibility
continues, though in its rudiments, even today, which is seen embodied in
section 40 of Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, which imposed a duty on
officers employed in connection with the affairs of a village and each person
residing in a village to communicate to the nearest magistrate or to the officer in
charge of the nearest police station certain information.
“Regulations for the Police of Collectorships of Bengal Bihar and Orissa”, known
as Regulation No XXII of 1793 of Lord Cornwallis, made the Police in the country
the exclusive charge of the Government and who may be specially appointed to
that trust.14
Thus it can be seen that the British how much so ever they were contemptuous
of the integrity of local people, were convinced that the policing would not be
successful without a tolerably reliable agency in the villages.
12 M. B. Chande, “The Police in India” Atlantic Publishers and Distributors, New Delhi,
1997, at p 58
13 Ibid. at p. 63.
14 Id. at p. 69.
15 Id. at p. 79.
The Indian Police Act, 1861 did not come into force automatically in all the
provinces since there was a provision in it, which stipulated that the Act would be
applicable to any province only when so notified by Governor General in Council.
The Act was never applied in Provinces of Madras, Bombay and Sind, which had
separate Police Acts. (Police Act of 1859 in Madras and Bombay District Police
Act II of 1867 in Bombay, were almost similar to Indian Police Act, 1861 with
certain changes based on local conditions).
Assimilation of Lessons:
While as a democracy, India should be striving towards an inclusive policing,
where the policing functions are carried out on the basis of popular consent,
accountability and transparency is also required and in this the British models of
making police accountable to the public is worth emulation. In fact, the Police
Complaints Authority (PCA), which is already brought in force in many states in
India as an aftermath of Prakash Singh judgment, 17 is nothing but a copy of the
English model.
16 http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lif_con_in_soc_ins_pol-lifestyle-confidence-
social-institutions-police accessed at 9.41 am of 23/11/2009
17 Prakash Singh v Union of India, (2006) 8 SCC 1;(2006) 4 KLT 482 (SC).
It is also sad to note that there are no suggestions in the existing reform
recommendations18 to augment the existing system of village level cooperation in
policing. S 72 of the draft Kerala Police Act, 2008 for example provides for a
system of community policing, which perhaps is the sole proposition in the whole
of the draft statute that calls for community consultations. However, there are no
provisions which make the recommendations of the Community Liaison Group
mandatory and this would make the community policing an exercise to create
informants rather than participants in the policing process.
On the basis of the analysis of the police systems across countries, the following
suggestions are made:
1. There is a need to amend the various Police Acts in the country to bring in
more accountability and transparency in the functioning of police.
2. Instead of governmental functionaries, independent personnel having wide
experience and knowledge in law, management, accounting, social
service etc, should be appointed as members of the bodies which make
appointments and handle complaints against police.
3. As pointed out in Prakash Singh judgment 20, there should be independent
Police Complaints Authority to handle complaints against police men and
independent State Security Commission to handle appointment of top
officials of police. The members of these bodies should be selected
through an open recruitment process, and the selection committee can
comprise of the members mentioned currently as members of State
Security Commission. At least 1/3 rd of the members of the State Security
commission and Police Complaints Authority shall be drawn from
judiciary/legal academicians in consultation with the Chief Justice of High
Court.
4. Functions of State Security Commission should also include a general
supervision of the investigative functions, including providing facilities for
crime investigation, though it is not desirable to give the Commission any
powers to interfere in case to case investigation.
5. State Security Commission as envisaged by National Police Commission
draft is also an appellate authority to whom complaints regarding illegal or
irregular orders from superiors is to be made. A proper avenue for venting
18 Draft Kerala Police Act, 2008 for example is one such reform initiative in the state of
Kerala, one of the most progressive states in India.
19 Supra Note 17.
20 Supra Note 17.
such complaint and more importantly for recording the same, would create
a sense of independence in the police psyche which is essential to ensure
a free and fearless police force.
6. The Police Complaints Authority should be given the powers to record all
sorts of complaints against the police officers and to publish the details
there of in the website for public scrutiny. This would help a greater
accountability in the police.
7. There should be a proper enforcement mechanism for the findings of
Police Complaints Authority. The findings of the Authority should be final
and the Police Complaints Authority should be designated as the sole
disciplinary authority over the police officials, failing with the exercise of
Police Complaints Authority in discharge of their duties would go waste
In conclusion, it must be said that if the policing in India has to imbibe the true
spirit of community participation and become a role model for the policing,
then the emphasis on executive discretion should give way to participatory
policing and there administration of police should be made more transparent
and participatory. It should be borne in mind that in a modern democracy
police has a great role in keeping the social fabric together and ensuring the
continuance of democracy. Hence it is important to modify the negative
perception about the police that is deep rooted in the commoners psyche as
an instrument of torture by the power wielders, and to create a feeling of
comity in the public mind that police is their friend and guide and the
representative of common men in combating crime, who is accountable to
public for their deeds and misdeeds. Equally important is the feeling of
comfort in the minds of police men who should be freed from arbitrary
interference from powers-that-be in discharge of their duties to ensure their
allegiance to cause of common men and to uphold the scepter of justice
entrusted to them by law in a just and equitable manner, acceptable to
common man.
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