Researching the Justice System

Some Important Lessons from the IJR and SPIR

Radhika Jha*

The Indian criminal justice system has long been a subject of public debate, within nearly all quarters. The general understanding of and public sentiments attached to the criminal justice pillars such as police and courts have ossified in myriad complex ways, with seemingly conflicting opinions prevailing simultaneously.

However, until quite recently, there have been few attempts to study the criminal justice system empirically and scientifically. Even as some excellent resources at the state and local level have been brought out by researchers and civil society organisations, at the national level such data is scarce. Aside from sporadic surveys by international research organisations such as the Pew Research Centre and the World Values Survey, which cover some aspects of the public perception of the criminal justice system in India, little data is available on either the functioning of the criminal justice pillars or on the stakeholder perceptions and experiences at the national level.

The SPIR and IJR series

While both the Status of Policing in India Report series (brought out by Common Cause in collaboration with the Centre for Study of Developing Societies) and the India Justice Report series (brought out collaboratively1 by sectoral experts, including Common Cause) bring out comparable, empirically sound data on the issue, they are also distinct in some of the following ways, thus making them complimentary to each other:

  • While the SPIR series focuses primarily on the functioning, perceptions, and capacities of the police forces across the country, the IJR series takes a composite look at the overall criminal justice system in India covering its four major pillars—police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aid.
  • The IJR series exclusively uses data from official sources published by the government. It relies on reports published by various government bodies such as the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD), the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), and the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), to name a few. Some information is also sourced through Right to Information applications.
    On the other hand, the SPIR series too provides statistical analysis of data from official sources in one part of the report, but a major section of the reports focuses on primary data sources—data from surveys with key stakeholders. Other methodological tools are often also employed such as focused group discussions, media analysis, etc., depending upon the theme of the report.
  • For the IJR series, the basic thematic pillars for analysis are constant through all the reports within the series, for all four departments—police, judiciary, prisons, and legal aids. Some of the key thematic pillars used for the analysis are human resources, infrastructure, diversity, workload, and trends. Based on the availability of state-level data, some new thematic pillars have been added, such as budgets, training, and technology. However, previous pillars as published in the earlier report remain constant, and the state-wise ranking on these indicators maps the states’ progress or regress over the years. In this series, the focus is on capacity-related indicators, attempting to measure how adequate the system is to be able to deliver justice.
    In the SPIR series, every report covers different aspects of policing using both official data analysis as well as survey data. While the first report was on the public perception of the police, people’s experiences, levels of satisfaction, trust, and fear, the second report focused on the police personnel themselves, studying their own perceptions, experiences, attitudes, and working conditions. The following two studies covered the aspect of policing in extraordinary circumstances—policing in conflict-affected regions, and policing during the pandemic.
  • Even as both reports provide data across the states at a national level, in the IJR series, data on all 28 states and eight union territories is analysed, and most of the states and UTs are ranked based on size. In SPIR, depending upon the nature of the issue being studied, the states are selected, since specific criteria such as conflict-affected states or states which witnessed a higher impact of the national lockdown following the Covid-19 pandemic are not always met uniformly across all the states.

Given all the above differences, each report series is unique in its objective and scope. Yet, both complement each other in not only data triangulation and validation, but also by filling in gaps. Used together, the two research series serve as essential baseline resources for measuring and driving policylevel trends and ultimately pushing the states towards reforms.

Why Official Data?

Both the IJR and the SPIR series rely heavily on official data sources for analyses. Critics of official data often discard any data published by the government with claims of fudging, withholding, or even inaccuracy.

However, while all of these claims may be true to a certain extent and in specific events, to a great extent, the large universe of data published by government bodies is incomparable in its potency. Further, many of the issues of data inaccuracy can be ironed out with proper time-series analysis and by applying logical filters. Publicly-available government data is in reality an impressive and one of the most reliable resources for understanding the larger trends and patterns in India’s justice system and are often amenable to further statistical analysis.

Some of the major reasons for our reliance on official data are:

  • Data across states and UTs is available in a comparable format. To understand variations and parallels, it is important to get data at the state level and it should also be in a uniform format both across the states and over time, enabling comparative analysis. Central agencies such as BPRD, NCRB, NALSA, and NJDG provide such information.
  • The volume of information published by government bodies is incomparable to any other source. The data on crime in India, for instance, is available from the year 1953 onward.
  • Being sourced directly from the local bodies such as police stations, district courts, or prisons, this is the most reliable source of information for studying the basic trends and patterns. Further, the extent of accountability and liability upon the government for its own data is much higher than that coming from any other private sources. Thus, these data sets are often highly reliable.
  • From time to time, various government bodies bring out their own targets or benchmarks for implementing reforms in the system. For instance, advisories from the Ministry of Home Affairs have 36 | July-September, 2022 COMMON CAUSE | Vol. XLI No. 3 recommended 33 per cent reservation for women2 . The states can justifiably be measured against these benchmarks based on official data to get an accurate description of the extent to which they have been able to meet the criteria.
  • As an advocacy tool, official data is immensely helpful for policy recommendations and understanding the emerging trends which need to be addressed. For instance, claims of bias against marginalised communities are corroborated by prison data on the over-representation of marginalised communities.

What are some of the Limitations of Official Data?

However, official data also suffers from certain limitations, which need to be kept in mind in their reading and analysis. Some of these are:

  • Data is only available for a limited set of parameters and is to that extent deficient for measuring certain important indicators. For instance, data on religious and social diversity in the judiciary is not published, thus making reliable measurements impossible. Often, format changes also cause certain data to be withdrawn. For instance, data on religious diversity in the police has not been published since 2013 after the NCRB stopped publishing data on human resources.
  • Certain data points are persistently over-represented, while some others are under-represented, thus making them unreliable. For instance, it is contented that the data on human rights violations is underreported in the official publications, often because such cases are not registered by either the police or human rights commissions because of the political implications.
  • Another related issue is that of misinterpretation of data, which may skew the real picture and even cause flawed reporting in the future. A classic example of this is crime data, which is often interpreted by the media and the public as a representation of the state of law and order in a region. In reality, a high crime figure may be reflective of high levels of registration of cases by the police and thus more responsive policing, while a low crime figure may suggest the exact opposite. However, public clamour based on these misinterpretations causes undue pressure on the police, further amplifying the issue of non-registration of cases.
  • In some cases, official data is also unreliable because of errors and discrepancies. For instance, for the year 2013, while NCRB reported the actual number of civil and district-armed police as 13,48,9843 , data for the same period as reported by BPRD was 13,47,9904 .

Despite these limitations, there is immense value in mining the available information and analysing the data to find meanings and truths about the state of justice in India. It is this endeavour that propels both the India Justice Report and the Status of Policing in India Report series to keep pursuing these empirical studies and work towards structural reforms.

Endnotes

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July September 2022