In this article for Business Standard, Renuka Sane, Visiting Fellow at IDFC Institute, highlights why data on reported crime is insufficient to gauge the law and order situation. Crime Victimisation Surveys can step in to fill the gaps by estimating the true law and order experience of people.
Excerpts below:
“It is useful to step back and ask what it is that we wish to do with the crime data. Our first response is likely to be: We want to know the law and order experience of people. Do people feel safe in their homes and in public spaces? Do they feel that the police is responsive to their complaints? How do they modify their behaviour in fear of crime? Only when we know the answers to these questions can we begin to quantify the extent and nature of crime, and police performance.”
“Why is it that reported crime fails to explain the answers to these questions? If citizens are too scared to go to the police, or feel like the police won’t do anything anyway, or if the police refuse to report cases, then true crime is always going to be higher than reported crime, and we will never know”
Read the full article here.
Note: This work was done by the author/s when they were a part of the IDFC Institute and is republished here with permission.
