The challenge
Gender-based violence is under-reported in India, and at baseline police stations registered close to zero domestic incident reports and fewer than four gender-based violence criminal cases a month.
The case
Sandip Sukhtankar, Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner and Akshay Mangla partnered with the Madhya Pradesh Police Department on what they describe as the largest randomized controlled trial of a police reform to date, covering 180 police stations serving 23.4 million people in 12 of the state's districts. Stations were randomly assigned to have no help desk, a regular women's help desk, or one run by female officers; help desks were private spaces for female complainants, combined with officer training and community outreach with the NGO ActionAid. According to J-PAL, stations with help desks registered 1.5 civil cases (Domestic Incident Reports) per month on average against 0.05 in stations without, and 4.4 criminal cases (First Information Reports) per month against 3.8; the rise in criminal cases came only from woman-run desks. Female officers became more likely to say they would take women's claims seriously, but men's attitudes did not change, and women were no more likely to report cases of gender-based violence, nor did arrests increase. The Madhya Pradesh Police Department has since scaled up the programme to 950 police stations.
Why the results were mixed
The authors say police responsiveness can be improved even in resource-constrained, patriarchal settings by focusing attention on women's cases and by greater gender representation; in a commentary in Science, Graeme Blair and Nirvikar Jassal called the results mixed because registrations rose but reporting by women and arrests did not.
Sources
- Sukhtankar, S., Kruks-Wisner, G., & Mangla, A. (2022). Policing in patriarchy: An experimental evaluation of reforms to improve police responsiveness to women in India. Science, 377(6602), 191–198.
- J-PAL (October 2022). Improving policing in the midst of patriarchy. Policy briefcase.
- Blair, G., & Jassal, N. (2022). Accessing justice for survivors of violence against women. Science, 377(6602), 150–151 (accepted version via LSE Research Online).
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