Policing in India, especially vis-à-vis minorities, needs urgent reform so that it can be seen as a force upholding law and order and not just the appearance of law and order, write Sahajveer Baweja, Daniella Ekmekjian and Gabriella Ekmekjian.
—
POLICING is primarily meant for societal control of crime to ensure public safety and uphold the rule by law through the rule of law.
The main role of the police is to act as protectors of society rather than enforcers of authority. The discussion about the role and legitimacy of policing has gained a great deal of attention in today’s world.
Why should law enforcement exist in the first place? To what extent does it serve all members of the society fairly? These are some of the inquiries, once primarily of academic interest, which have now become questions of eminence for the members of the society who have consented to relinquish a certain degree of liberty and freedom to the community in the interest of better societal governance.
There is a growing demand for accountability and transparency from policing agencies wherein individuals seek assurance that these agencies uphold principles of fairness, accountability and justice while maintaining order.
The efficacy of their social contract hinges on questioning whether policing as an agency fulfills its mandate ethically and equitably, hence, whether these authorities are legitimate.
The main role of the police is to act as protectors of society rather than enforcers of authority.
Nevertheless, perception towards police authority varies even greatly across various demographic groups, especially minorities. The issue of police legitimacy becomes more interesting and rather important when minority communities are taken into account.
Despite belonging to the same society and sharing equitable claims and expectations, minority communities often feel marginalised by agencies of policing. Even if the majority of society believes that policing is legitimate, the issue needs fresh inquiry from the perception of minority communities.
Therefore, when we discuss minorities and policing, the heart of the matter shifts from inquiring about the inherent legitimacy of police authority to the moot question of whether the police as an authority is perceived as legitimate by the minority communities.
Also read: Juveniles in adult prisons: Why is the Juvenile Justice Act failing its object and purpose?
When there are unimaginable examples of rampant abuse of power and injustices faced by minority groups day and night, can a police authority, even if functioning legitimately, get acceptance from minority communities?
As we seek to understand policing and its relation with minority communities at its core, we find that trust, consent and respect underpin it; or lead to its collapse.
This article delves into the challenges surrounding police legitimacy within minority communities, examining the dynamics of trust, consent and respect in police–minority interactions.
By scrutinising the experiences of minority populations, it becomes apparent that systemic issues have perpetuated a cycle of mistrust and disenchantment with agencies of policing. But there is a solution to it— procedural justice.
Legitimacy challenges: Exploring trust, consent and respect within minority communities
Legitimacy problems within the police force are ever present, particularly among minority populations. These problems can mainly take the form of a lack of trust, consent and respect.
Trust
Though trust is integral to the legitimacy of policing, the interactions of minorities with the police are frequently devoid of it. Motives, such as explaining one’s reasoning for certain decisions, ensure that citizens feel the State and its actors are voluntarily driven to uphold values that benefit the community.
Given this, if a certain level of trust is expected within police interactions, when mistakes are made, they are more likely to be endured. Thus, when notions of trust are violated, particularly among Black populations, one’s faith in the very institutions that are created to protect them is irreparably diminished.
Consent
Consent is vital to the acquisition of legitimacy and is underpinned by the Peelian principles of policing by consent, aiming to legitimise the police through societal support.
Also read: If those on bail are tracked 24/7, has their liberty really been (partially) restored?
To gain societal support, of those the police serve directly, there must be transparency surrounding police powers, integrity in the way authority is exercised, and accountability for their actions.
In this sense, legitimacy is viewed as the public’s approval or consent for an institution to have the right to exist and carry out its function appropriately. Consent brings about ‘a sense of obligation to obey’ the police and law.
Through this, when the public believes the police and its associated legal bodies are legitimate, they deem the police’s inherent values as aligned with their own and, as such, obey and cooperate with authorities as they believe it is the right and moral thing to do.
Moreover, in order for legitimacy to be achieved, the collective society or those qualified to grant consent must recognise and affirm authority. Here, it is important to discern who qualifies to provide consent as seen through the emergence of racial and caste-based injustices and police-perpetrated murders.
Black populations are rarely given the opportunity to grant consent. Rather than serving and protecting Black communities, the police are perpetrators of the very violence they seek to deter.
There is a growing demand for accountability and transparency from policing agencies wherein individuals seek assurance that these agencies uphold principles of fairness, accountability and justice while maintaining order.
Black populations, primarily in the United States, have unjustifiably been subject to racially predatory policing tactics that further demarcate the coordinates of the prolific ‘legitimacy deficit’ faced by these communities.
Such a deficit is largely attributed to the empirically supported claim that African American citizens believe the police are devoid of neutrality, fairness and respect. The 2020 Gallup report analysed individual confidence in the police by racial group, discovering that 56 percent of White adults and only 19 percent of Black adults stated that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police.
This 37 percent racial gap represents the largest divergence between Black and White confidence in the police to date. This cycle of exclusion continuously informs police legitimacy, where Black voices are systematically exiled to the fringes of consensual policing rhetoric.
A similar example can be taken in India where due to anti-muslim bias expressed by the police force, the consent of Muslims as a minority religion has no value. Consequently, Muslims in India doubt the legitimacy of the police system.
Also read: The uncanny Throckmorton: An Indian resurgence of a 500-year-old trial
Half of the police force believes that Muslims are more prone towards committing crimes. In such a situation, the police fail to run the system with consent. Rather, an obvious change takes place where policing by consent is metamorphosed into policing by coercion.
Respect
The scarce demonstration of respect shown to Muslim community in India by police officers is pervasive as police continuously act in disrespectful manners, which over time forces citizens to become hesitant and reluctant to grant legitimacy to the police.
Even bystanders who do not directly experience disrespect and abuse of power from the police become less trusting of the police. This is particularly true for bystanders who identify with the same traits as the individual being disrespected.
As observed within the Muslim population in India, a lack of respect is present where excessive use of force and power is used to ensure compliance. Regardless of current experiences with police, it is inevitable that prior experiences will seep into the anticipation of future experiences, such as a Muslim individual being afraid for their life when being stopped for a regular check.
Hence, when subjugated individuals anticipate police disrespect, it plays an important role in shaping the perceptions to such an extent that these individuals even fear positive police encounters. Hence, such an example demonstrates the importance of respect as a core foundation within police–citizen interactions.
Carrying out police duties with respect for the community and its citizens is integral to gaining society’s trust and being deemed legitimate. However, through police–citizen interactions, police officers not only fail to demonstrate respect but demand respect from those they unlawfully disrespect.
Though trust is integral to the legitimacy of policing, the interactions of minorities with the police are frequently devoid of it.
This is further echoed in a study conducted by Waddington et al. in 2015, where a woman stated, “If [the police officer] wanted respect, I think he should’ve shown more respect.” (p. 229). Here, it is clear that respect cannot be afforded to those who repeatedly show disrespect.
How to address legitimacy problems in policing
In her article ‘Police Reform and the Dismantling of Legal Estrangement’ Monica C. Bell underscores the importance of adopting legal estrangement as a tool to broaden the scope of procedural justice and treat one’s distrust in the police as a symptom of indirect marginalisation and structural exclusion.
Bell suggests implementing community-centered measures and linking the police to social welfare institutions, which she maintains will create “deep and lasting cultural change.” But these suggested reforms dangerously resemble the peripheral reforms promised by a procedural justice policing model and do not necessarily move us beyond it. They insufficiently capture the breadth of reforms required to achieve profound institutional change and do nothing to shatter the hegemonic myth that police are warriors against crime and guardians of order.
To remedy this, we must dislodge policing from surrounding ideologies, beliefs and powerful myths that dominate how State tactics are marshalled to control citizens.
This hierarchical relationship between police and citizens is upheld and fortified by the factuality that policing’s essence is embedded in the imaginative assumption that society can be divided into a clear-cut binary of good and evil. These ideologies and perceptions lend themselves to sustaining a cyclical system wherein the police legitimate themselves. This adversarial relationship is utilised as evidence to further grant police more power.
It is evident that the police do not control crime but merely represent a State tool designed to maintain the appearance of order for those it deems worth protecting.
We must dislodge policing from surrounding ideologies, beliefs and powerful myths that dominate how State tactics are marshalled to control citizens.
Dismantling such ideas will render police more permeable to reforms and will aid in relocating the police to a visible position where they resemble a mundane or ordinary institution. Similar to other professional occupations in society, the police require demystification in order to shatter their impenetrability to begin to move towards treating citizens as clients rather than moral failures.
Conclusion
Police reform debates have largely centered around reforming or dismantling a fatally broken system, neglecting the deeper structural issues that permit the police to function in an opaque manner.
Only when exaggerated societal ideologies surrounding the police are shattered will we be able to reimagine the police force as a tool to maintain order rather than the appearance of it.
