HUMANISING THE POLICE –THE ROLE OF ITS LEADERS
I have made a ceaseless effort
Not to ridicule, not to bewail,
Not to scorn human actions,
But to understand them.
These words of Spinoza give expression to the subjacent current of human
responses that constitute humanism, that as the common denominator of all natural
human activities, breeds an environment of facile fusion of hearts and minds
wherein sprout further causes for human evolution as manifested in diverse fields
of human activities including policing.
Humanism involves a sense of belonging to mankind with all its qualities and
limitations, that breeds an intense urge to respond to the joys and sufferings of other
beings. The chief attributes of humanism are a sixth sense that accommodates and
cooperates in the common interests of mankind and an uncanny power to perceive
the self as an indivisible part of the larger scheme of the universe in the pattern of
Atma imbibed in Paramatma. It is a concept that instills kindness and tenderness
in an individual, elegance and classicism in a culture, softness and civility in a
civilisation and concern and participation in a society. It is a transpicious crucible
wherein the negative discharges of evolution murl to be transformed into efficient
propellants of natural evolution.
Humanism is an eerie solvent which causes depravity and selfishness to
effloresce as the beatitude of kindness and tenderness. It ennobles a caractere with a sense of levity and concinnity, substructed in its environment and leaves an
organisation in excelsis of its potentials. Humanism renders the organisation
germane to human activities either as a service-oriented unit or as an establishment
of human interplay by rendering it sensitive to the joys and sufferings of human
beings and thereby making it responsive to their needs and efforts. The salubrious,
mellowing effects of humanism are beautifully brought out by William Wordsworth
in "Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Titem Abbey".
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me, with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.
Though policing is a human service au fond, its methods are strikingly inhuman
in India due to poor leadership and a failure of our planners to tread paripassu with
the amble in the clime of man management and policing techniques. The tragedy
of the Indian police is that its means and ends do not amate. The querimony that
the feral methods of the Indian police are more contemptible and anti-social than
the criminal acts they are supposed to control cannot be dismissed glibly as
inaccurate in prevailing circumstances. Our police system has grown of late to be
a monster deprived of all strains of humanism by its perennial exposure to the
inhuman methods of both the criminals and policing. It is true that association
moulds character. The tenor of immane policing methods inextricably obfuscates
and dislimns the strains of humanism in rerum natura. The issue can be dealt on
two fronts; adopting the latest developments in police techniques to make it a more
civilized operation and shaping the police environment to make it less sensitised to
inhuman exposures. As the police leaders themselves are victims of this infaust
mould of mind, tremendous organisational efforts may be necessary to refract the
fallouts and reinstate humanism in the police. Should the police conform to
standards of humane comportment and methods a la hauteur de its desinent goals,
policing would become a meaningful and relevant service to society.
The test of the Police as a humanised organisation is its acceptance by the society
as a couthie associate, so that no child is scared of hearing the name of a policeman
and no agrestic folks, take to their heels at the mere sight of one. It is a wonder how
people manage to accept the police - whom they perceive as an embodiment of
bestiality, incivility and inanity - as guardians of their life, honour and property.
The Indian police has cohabited long enough with its disrepute. A decision anon to
furbish its image as a humanised setup though late, will not be intempestive as policing is as yet far from having its relevance to society luxated though its inhuman
methods are fast eating up its credibility. Its leaders cannot afford any more the
exuberance of complacency if the police must stand up to its expectations as the
peace-keeper of society and assert to resile to its deeper human strains. The process
of showing the police its roots which are obfuscated by the lounderings of time and
its own working methods must begin anon. The wherewithal of affecting the
transformation is varied and covers such disparate avenues as recruitment, training,
environment, exposures, man management, policing methods, uniforms,
organisation, criminal laws, living and working conditions, work pressure, image,
public relation techniques etc. A police leader should effectively cover all these
aspects in his plan should he wish to see his police humanised.
Police recruitment
The human aspect is the fulcrum of policing. Policing is primarily latitant
human interaction in the perennial luctation to safeguard the security and rights of
the common man and the human quality in the force determines effectiveness and
vitality of the performance. Human resources policy as a device of selecting human
stuffs needs careful handling at the highest level to attract right people to the fold.
The present Indian environment of ruthless concours, impeached with a
degringolade of values has made human resources management a farce. The
wherewithal of human resources management like recruitment, promotions,
transfers, rewards, punishments, etc. are no more employed for maximum benefit
of the organisation. Self-interests have undermined quality and character and
organisational interests are subordinated to personal behoofs. Though this
proclivity is prevalent in all fields in India, its adverse effects are kenspeckle in the
police organisation as the line-system of the organisation makes the ingenuity of
the human resources management a factor having direct and immediate bearing on
the efforts of humanising the police.
An earnest effort from the highest level to infuse the creme de la creme,
characterised by genuine human stuff, probity and commitment may be the
foremost need of the police. The prevalence of police administration over general
administration in the survival of a nation as a democratic and orderly country may
necessitate changes in recruitment policy. This is to ensure that only those with a
deep natural humane disposition step in to the police so that the arrogance and
savagery, bred by its environment can do little harm and the tenue of humanism
will continue alongside policing work.
Proper training
The chief cause of the police seldom being humane in India is its ineffective
training facilities. In spite of adequate infrastructures available for police training
in India, these centres largely fail to offer quality to the training to humanise a recruit
adequately to stand up to the challenges of the temulence of the arrogant and feral
environment that policing breeds. An overhaul of the extant training facilities in
terms of quality, content and character in favour of humanised policing practices
is inevitable to keep the police excubant against the depravity of the modem society.
The psychology faculty of the centre should endeavour to build character and
strengthen human fibres. The training centres should lay emphasis on an attitudinal
change in the recruits and develop the skills of humanised policing. The training
centres should give the impression of being temples, dedicated to humanising the
police apart from actually being so.
Exposure to artistic activities
C. Kluckhohm and H. A. Murray said, "Personality is the totality of a man's
knowledge, motives, values, beliefs, goal-seeking patterns and psychological
makeup of an individual and include environmental and hereditary factors". The
substratum of individuality is moulded of complex building blocks derived ab extra
and ab intra to the persona. The same view is supported by Argyris when he says,
"Behaviour occurs as an interaction between organism and environment" in the
simulacrum of Prakrithi devolving on Purusha to create the Universe. The
environmental aspect as a wherewithal, open to police leaders, calls for designs that
can humanise the police. The environment, gravid with human comportances like
tenderness, elegance, civility and concern, impinges upon its subjects to make them
conform to its influences. A police leader can humanise his force by exposing it to
those influences.
The strenuous nature of policing hardens the police in spirit and mind. A
measure of creative activities like literary interactions, exposure to poetry and fine
arts, musical performances etc besprent in the precious spare-time between policing
hours intenerates the man behind the police facade and resiles him to his natural
human tendencies. Artistic activities counterpose the damage done to the man by
the role-play of policing and open him up to the halcyon clime of an ideal and
imaginary world, far removed from the hard and brusque realities of police life and
makes his life tanto uberior.
Exposure to social service activities
The exposure of the police to social service activities is the celestial surgeon
who enraces human mellowness and dignity to the police. Interaction with people
from the plane of oblation sinks the policeman from his inflated self to the roots of
his genuine feelings and concerns and conditions him to respond to the vicissitudes of the environment. It opens up a new vista of feelings and experiences that make
life richer and meaningful au reste sensitisation of the self.
The social service activities, as a form of servitude to mankind and a voluntary
involvement with the people, absterge the temulence of power and abraid latitant
human tendencies in the policeman to bring to the surface his pristine self. It is left
to the police leaders to include opulent social service schemes in their human
resources development programmes if their force is to be genuinely humanised.
Better treatment of subordinates
Rogers in "On Becoming A Person" says, "The more fully the individual is
understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he
has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is
forward". The conviction of fair treatment and concern for human dignity in the
policeman devolves the comports beneath. An atmosphere of respect, dignity and
fairness resiles his self to its pristine charm of innocence and couthie disposition.
Au contraire, the strains of humiliation, contempt and scorn drive him to catharize
his frustrations and indignities on both those lower in the hierarchy and the members
of the public who come to his doors au desespoir for redressal at the cutting-edge
level of the policing. The spite and the feral indignities he inflicts on those at his
mercy would be pro rata to those he is subjected to by his leaders.
A policeman shabbily instated in his organisation develops a poor self-image.
Solley and Murphy analyse this when they say "He perceives, responds, acts and
communicates in terms of his complex self-image by trying to be consistent with
it; too negative a self-image leads to adjustment mechanisms". A policeman, proud
of his self and work is created by respect to his individual dignity that develops a
confidence about humane strains subjacent in his person and dares him to betray
the human responses that are so natural to his entrails and make the Police
environment in the country besprent with the milk of human attributes like kindness,
tenderness, elegance and civility.
Exemplary punishments for inhuman acts
Motivation and deterrence are opposite facets of the same coin that pays for
attitudinal change. Deterrence, although an extra force to the system, is an effective
wherewithal in materialising mobility in an intended direction as an addendum to
disparate motivation factors. Efforts to humanise the police call for the apposite
employment of deterrence to inhumane acts by way of exemplary punishments.
The prevalence of means over the ends should be made the cardinal principle
of policing. The ends, however eximious they be, should not find recognition by
the police if the means adopted are mean and deplorable. All inhuman acts by the police should be met with heavy punishments and an atmosphere of social
ostracisation of such elements should be created in the force. The realisation that
the police are ordinary people and no criminal act committed in discharge of official
duties would extricate them from the ensuing liability should be made crystal clear.
An ingenerate sense of regard for people, oblivious to their locus standi in the
soc il ladder, can be generated in the police by installing a mortal fear of inhuman
acts through exemplary punishments.
Elimination of violent methods from policing
The fact that policing is a human service au fond does not justify adoption of
feral methods in policing. Adoption of violence and savagery by the police gives
legitimacy to such methods in the public eye and thus weakens the orderly fabric
of society. Violent methods like employment of third degree in interrogation to
obtain quick results, in preference to the tedium of swink't investigation, weaken
the image of the police, already weighed under by pressures of work.
Adoption of scientific methods in policing helps in humanising the police. It
saves the police from the antilogy of committing criminal acts to meet the ends of
justice. All efforts at humanising the police prove infructuous until the police
continues to be at the mercy of violent methods for results.
A genuine effort at humanising the police should begin with the adoption of
modem policing techniques and scientific methods to instil sophistication and
accuracy in policing. Old habits die hard. Vigorous efforts to mundify old nasty
habits should find priority as a substruction on which the edifice of efforts of
humanising the police should be built.
Elimination of constabulary
The constabulary which forms the backbone and cutting-edge of the Indian
policing and which wields a real authority over the populace is a lowly paid,
modestly educated and non-elite mass of uniformed workers. The authority they
wield makes them fearsome while their low status in society prevents them from
commanding empathy, respect and legitimacy. Authority sans empathy, respect and
legitimacy decidedly proves to be a deadly substructure that breaks the conduit
between the organisation and the public and renders the organisation dyspathetic
to the aspirations of the humanity at large. The constabulary with its intramural
enlightenment and responsibility finds the intricacies of civil and comme il faut
comportance rather peregrine to its gout.
In the circumstances, the rank of sub-inspector with its present level of minimum
education and status in society should form the cutting-edge level with no policing
powers and responsibilities devolved beneath that level. The comport of the cutting-edge level of the police decides its image because of its perennial interaction
with the general public. Sub-inspectors as the cutting-edge level functionaries must
perform the bulk of police tasks like beat patrolling, station house duties,
preliminary interrogations and other investigation assistance that brings the police
to actual contact with the public. The officials with their education and social status
can be more civil and courteous to the general public.
Change of uniform to white
A change in the existing police uniform is an issue worth assessing as a device
to humanise the police force. The present khaki uniform inspires a mood of
arrogance and savagery by its psychological association with power and repression.
A change to white may prove to be for the better in intenerating the psyche of the
police. The strategy in selecting a new uniform is to imbibe a sense of cleanliness,
levity, balance and probity and to inspire a couthie disposition in the force.
Change in criminal laws
A few glaring anomalies and erroneous provisions of the extant criminal laws
in India contributed to the easy reclame of criminals from the clutches of the law
in many cases and the harassment of innocent persons by the police in some other
cases. The loopholes in the criminal laws have to be plugged if crime administration
is to be humanised and command a semblance of public respect and confidence.
Intelligent adaptations in the extant criminal laws to interdict inhuman policing
methods and provide wherewithals for facile crime administration are the needs of
the hour.
The policeman or the judicial officer under whose custody a person is kept under
detention must be made responsible by name for the timely release of the detenue
with the provision that if detention exceeds the period provided by law, the
concerned officer is liable for proceedings for the unlawful detention sans the
privilege of exemptions for acts performed in official colour. Also, all cases of
violence and physical outrage committed in police custody should be made
punishable with exemplary penalties by special legislations. Such outre measures
may bring an end to shocking inhumane acts committed in the similitude of policing
in some quarters and save the Indian police from acute public resentment.
The current bail provisions of Indian criminal law are a source of acute
embarrassment to police officers with criminals arrested by them after weeks or
months of stupendous efforts being let off by the judiciary on bail only to facilitate
them to jump the bail. All discretions with police and judiciary regarding bail should
be taken away with only a select few offences of enormous gravity made
nonbailable. This will restrict both the police and the judiciary from showing favours to some criminals en revanche to favours and bring mechanical accuracy
.to bail provisions. This measure may be found a path-breaker in preventing the
misuse of criminal laws and the inhuman play of favours and disfavours to
criminals.
Civil liberty cells
External controls must walk pan passu with ingenerate eneraty in the act of
self-disciplining in view of the human propensity to unwittingly stray from the
chosen path. Institution of civil liberty cells in each district and metropolitan city
as advisory conseil to the police chief of the region with local civil liberty
champions as its members to draw attention to specific instances of inhuman
conduct by subordinate officers would meet the need of control ab extra to keep
the police on pemoctation against inhuman comportment. The civil liberty cell
should be a dynamic part of the police administration in the region and its
observations should set in motion a process of verification and peremptory action.
Though subjecting police to the scrutiny of an outside setup may appear a retrograde
measure, it helps the assuefaction of the policing methods to human comports in
rerum natura.
Better service conditions
People can afford the luxury of humaneness when they are insulated from the
quotidian diversions of their occupational hazards. A delectable service
atmosphere mellows their responses to those around them. They begin to see the
world in a better light, in conformity with the atmosphere around them and try to
share these pleasant feelings with those they come in contact with. The levity of
the environment land the absence of strains from the service-front facilitate their
opening-up to give vent to their latitant human contents.
An effort to humanise the police cannot ignore the need to improve service
conditions to make the police proud to be enraced in the vocation. The sense of
contentment generated by the service atmosphere devolves to the public that
interacts with the police. In addition, the public leams to hold the police in esteem
in conformity with its improved service conditions and sophistication. This
interaction between the police and the public can be a sound substruction for
humane policing.
Better living conditions
A reasonably good standard of living helps the police to rise above the physical and security need-levels to social and higher need-levels in the need-hierarchy
outlined by McGregor and have the mental space for wider interests like human
concerns of kindness, tenderness, elegance and civility. A low living standard
retards the police image and esteem in society.
It is necessary to make the police financially bein by adequately compensating
for the risks and hazard factors of their jobs to attract the best men to its fold apart
from securing them against financial distractions. A feeling of condign
compensation and contentment is certain to raise the police above physical and
security need-levels to give free expression to natural human tendencies.
Lighter work
All creations in their fraicheur and nature's bounty are kind and tender and
elegant. The strains of the environment cause inquietude in nature's balance and
leads to the obfuscation of a few precious sheens from its innards. It manifests in
loss of human factors in man and his mental space turns intenible of human qualities
by environmental strains such as work-pressures.
The Indian police is weighed down with an impossible quantum of
responsibilities and tasks. This work-pressure adversely affects the mental balance
apart from depriving those tasks from the attention due. It is impossible to expect
a man bogged down with lourd responsibilities and tasks to spare his time for the
niceties of human qualities.
An important measure in humanising the police is to scale down the
work-pressure on it to a bearable level. An element of levity in work makes the
work environment dulcet and provides an adequate mental space to devolve on the
exuberances of human comportations.
Exclusion of social legislations
. The propensity of weighing the police with the enforcement of all types of
legislations has become a major hazard to effective policing. It is emphatically so
with social legislations which pass out of our legislative house sans cohibition.
These progressive measures are inherently controversial in nature and their
enforcement by the police weakens its credibility as an agency of serious business
and peremptory order. It is plauditory to conceive of the police as a vehicle of
progressive measures. In the process, however, the police is certain to put both its
credibility and professionalism in jeopardy as these social legislations lack the
depth and gravity required to enforce them. Assiduous enforcement may be
perceived as inhuman acts of high-handedness and harassment of certain sections
of the society. It is not in the interest of the process of humanising the police to
expose it to civil contecks that are gravid with the malengine of expropriating from all those concerned from human concerns. The exclusion of social legislations from
the ambit-of normal police work will save the police organisation from the
embarrassment of handling issues for which it is not equipped either mentally or
professionally or organisationally. This measure will exeme the police organisation
from unwarranted pressures that add to the dehumanisation process and also
enhances its legitimacy as the guardian of order and security of human interests.
Exposures to public relations techniques
Though efforts have been en train to ameliorate the image of the Indian police
for a long time, nothing substantial could be achieved due to amateurish handling.
The present Indian police managers have their image development wherewithal
limited to issuing occasional press statements while image development has
become a highly advanced field of specialisation with perennial scope for further
advancements. In view of the considerable significance of the image for successful
police operations, the wherewithal of image building in the police is required to be
updated with the latest techniques, applied by professionals in the field.
It does not suffice if the police is humanised; the police also should appear
humanised. While public relations professionals can handle the job from the
organisational level, an insight to the police about the rudiments of public relations
is sine qua non if it is to appear humanised to the public eye. This necessitates, the
exposure of the police to the latest public relations techniques at regular intervals
to imbibe the skill of civility in interacting with the public.
In-service image
The proclivity for role-play is a major driving force in the process of motivation.
People who enter a new setup, look to their new environment for the role they should
assume? and the setup renders them homo colons in conformity to its own image. ^
People joining a humanised organisation play the role of humaneness to fulfil their
esurient urge to identify with the setup. The in-service image of an organisation is
a powerful springboard that sets it to actuate that image.
An in-service image as a humane setup is de rigueur if humanising the police
is to grow as a tradition. The very reputation of the police as a humane setup limits
the options of the insiders to act antilogous to its reputation and thus exert an invisd
pressure to rise to the expectations of the organisation that owns them. The process
of building a humanised image ab infra requires the assistance of skeely
image-building technicians and adroit operations by police leaders. This forms the
drsinent and vital stage in humanising the police.
McGregor identifies man as "rational-emotive.. inextricably interwoven" and
defines motivation as "an emotional force". According to Irving Sarnoff,
"motivation is an internally operative tension-producing stimulus thai provokes the
individual to act in such a way as to reduce the tension". Plato traces the origin of
man's behaviour to knowledge from the head as he identified prominently in
politicians, emotion from the blood as identified prominently in soldiers and desire
from the stomach as identified prominently in businessmen. MoDougall in "Instinct
Theory of Hormic Psychology" speaks about sensory, motivational and emotional
aspects of behaviour. He says that environmental situations provide the stimuli
necessary to arouse a particular behaviour in a cognitive (sensory) aspect;
goal-directed behaviour is caused by the conative (motivational) aspect while an
affective (emotional) aspect arouses its own behaviour. Man should be approached
from two levels inter alia for an attitudinal change from conviction which according
to Woolbert, "is an appeal to reason" and persuasion which "is an appeal to
emotions". The role of police leaders in humanising the police lies in emotionally
integrating it with humanistic causes by esoteric organisational moves to supervene
a rational appeal to conviction by training and creation of environments in policing
where a man is treated as a man imprimis in spite of all his foibles or strengths.
Humanistic propensions in a hierarchical setup like the police should permeate
from above should the organisation be humanised and its lower strata identify it
with their organisational self. The police leaders should set standards of'human
comportment for others in the organisation to make it the substruction of
organisational behaviour.
Policing is an exercise revolving around the fulcrum of humanism while
humanism is the foundation on which the edifice of policing should stand. Policing
is a crime sans human concerns to support it. The infaust polarisation of dulcet
human propensities from nefandous policing activities in the present police setup
is a serious organisational malady that renders the very policing system of India
counter-productive and as a perpetuator of licensed crimes. Policing powers are a
trust invested in the police for exercise in the general interests of the people. The
police loses all its claims to power, the moment it sinks its concerns for people and
its policing activities become depravity in purls naturalibus. Humanism is the
ineluctable other side of the policing. Rather, policing is the negative discharges de
rigueur to the upward thrust of human interests. The Indian policing with its
obfuscating backfire sans the upward thrusts of human concerns may sink in the
Bay of Bengal some day unless its leaders shed their indolence to vitalise the police
with genuine human qualities.
posted by praveen # 8:10 PM 
