This chapter would deal in various issues regarding sources, collection and availability of data relating to crime. It would be appropriate to examine the degree of reliability of crime data since the analysis of criminal behaviour would be dependent on these.
3.1 Generation of crime data
When a cognizable crime has occurred the first step in the whole process of administration of criminal justice system to the crime victim is filing of the First Information Report (FIR) .Then it is recorded and a case is registered under appropriate section of law.
For cognizable crimes the police, on receipt of first information of commission of such a crime, have the responsibility to take action as prescribed in the book of law. However, for non-cognizable cases offences police is not given power to register an FIR, and carry out different steps of investigation like arrest of accused without the prior permission from the court of having jurisdiction.
Thus police stations are the primary source where the crime data are generated. The data originated in the police stations now flow to the District Crime Record Bureau (DCRB) who then feed these data to the State Crime Record Bureau (SCRB). SCRBs in different states are the coordinating agencies with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for providing state level crime statistics for final consolidation of national level data.
Thus there are set procedures through which police station figures reach the district police Headquarters and from there the State Crime Record Bureau collect and collate. For the state level crime data, the NCRB reach out these State organizations so that the Crime in India report containing the crime data of district, state & national level can be published. Thus one gets the year wise publication of NCRB‘s Crime in India reports.
The flow chart of crime statistics from police stations to national level recording through the districts and states looks as follows:
Police Station
District Crime Data (DCRB)
State Crime Data
National
Crime Crime
Bureau
3.2 Discrepancies in crime data and actual criminal behavior
Very often researchers in crime analysis come across discrepancies between the crime data and the actual extent of criminal behavior. The discrepancies between the actual crime scenario and the official crime figures may be found in two stages: some crimes may not be reported to the police and, even, out of the reported ones a substantial percentage may not be recorded by the law enforcement authority. Different issues that may affect the reliability of crime data are discussed below:
3.2.1 Under reporting of cases
It has been mentioned by several studies that crime incidents in India are to a great extent under reported and under registered(Dutta and Husain,2009; Dreze, and Khera 2000, Sharma, 2012; Chockalingham, 2003). All of these studies have exposed the phenomenon of gross under reporting of crimes in our society. Such problems have been cited in studies relating to developed countries also (Dilulio, 1996; Kelly, 2000 ; Jesse Brush,2007).Some of them quoted reasons for under reporting of crime incidents as discussed below:
a) Reluctance to file an FIR: For filing an FIR of a cognizable offence the victim or another informant has to visit the police station. But very often the victim may be reluctant to do so due to the costs which may be either financial or psychological which may be more for a member of the vulnerable and disadvantage group of the community. In a conflict zone there may be fear of retribution for the informant.
b) Lack of social awareness: Even some forms of crime might involve social taboo and embarrassment which would dissuade the complainant from coming to police station asking for police help in case of a crime like sexual assault, domestic violence etc.
This means that there is likelihood of some particular types of crime may get higher reporting while others are underreported. Sometime the unfriendly and unsympathetic behaviour, and even occasional allegations of hostile attitudes of the personnel in the police stations may act as an obstacle in this case. It is also seen very often that crimes of less serious nature has the higher possibility of going unreported as against more serious ones (Hamzah et al 2012). Chockalingham (2003) found in his survey that
only 4% of the victims of sexual offences and 24% of assault victims had reported the crimes to the police and a lot of incidents of economic offenses like consumer fraud and corruption cases of different forms go un reported.
c) Mistrust on criminal justice system: Another very important factor responsible for underreporting of crime is the perceived mistrust in police. If the victim has faith in the efficiency, motivations and the capability of the police to deliver there is an increased probability that the person in need of service from the police would come forward to report the crime that has been committed. For example since the conviction rate is miserably low in rape cases the victims of such crimes are reluctant to come forward to report in the apprehension that it would be a meaningless excise as noted by the National Commission of Women (2003). There are occasional public out bursts also about the corrupt practices of police personnel acting as sever disincentives to approach a police station for crime reporting.
3.2.2 Under registration of cases
Under registration of even reported information of offences may be the result of fear of revenge by the higher police authority in perceived rise of criminal statistics. It has been estimated that only 50% of sexual harassment cases and 53% of domestic violence cases are registered by the police. Thus there are discrepancies between the actual crime scenario and the official crime figures,( Iyer et al, 2010; Banerjee et al, 2009)
3.2.3 The “hierarchical “counting of crime
The method of ―hierarchical‖ counting in which crimes are counted as per the ― most serious act‖ has also been considered as an important issue .The data published by the NCRB only takes into account the ‗principal offence‘ in every FIR, which means the charge that attracts the maximum penalty decides the categorization of the offence. For example, .in the case of a rape-and- murder, the ‗principal offence‘ is murder since it attracts a maximum penalty of death. As a result, rapes that end in murder are recorded only as murders in NCRB‘s statistics. Normally a typical FIR contains several charges of different nature involving different scale of prescribed penalty as per law. All these lead to under- counting of all crimes in the statistics of the NCRB.
This is noted very often by the researchers as phenomenon of ‗dark figure of hidden crime‘ (Ziggy Mac Donald). Incidents of crimes not reported and registered would affect the research study on crime trend and determinants analysis. The under reporting and under recording may have a random or systematic variations. It is to be noted that some variables which are taken as determinants of crime may also likely to impact reporting behaviour of the individuals, for example, it is said that unemployed people in the short run may not like to report the crime. This issue of crime data discrepancy relates closely to the level of development of a society, which is most clearly reflected in the accessibility of the police. Thus, factors such as the number of police stations or telephones in a country affect reporting levels thereby affecting the quality and reliability of the results obtained from such data ( Mark Shaw et al , 2003)
3.3 Need to supplement the data pool through victimization survey
Studies on victimization have been advocated for correcting the data sets since it is found to be more reflective of real picture in the field (Chakraborty 2001). This is a process through which the quantum of crime in a society is assessed by interviewing the victims of crime. It is often felt that victimization surveys could help determine the actual situation of crimes and levels of criminal victimization by eliciting responses and opinions of a cross-section of people on issues relating to crime and punishment, fear perception as well as the efficacy of the criminal justice system. These types of surveys prove to be helpful in knowing the pros and cons of offenders and victims handling strategies of the state. But collection of victimization data throughout sourcing private surveys requires high expenditure. Therefore, it is believed that the most practical way of estimating and analyzing unreported crime lies in adjusting reported data with victimization rates based on surveys conducted by government law enforcement agencies (Uppal, 1978). More over there is a need for identification of new types of offences for collection of statistics there on as noted by Committee on Crime Statistics constituted in October, 2010 by the Ministry of Statistics &
Programme, Govt of India.
3.4 Conclusion
Thus it is seen that there are possibilities of under reporting and under registering of cases due to which crime data provided by NCRB may reflect only registered crimes rather than the actual crime situations in the country. However in absence of victimisation surveys in the macro scale NCRB figures have been used for crime analysis.
The crime data are generated at the police station level and then it travels from the concerned district HQ to the state SCRB and up to the national level i.e. the NCRB which finally makes the annual crime report available at the national level .Even though there are drawbacks in police crime data the tabulation of crimes known to the police is the best available index of crimes because it is the one "closest'' to the total number of crimes committed and therefore it gives us a fair picture of the annual volume and nature of crime.(Nagpal ,1976).Though it has been recognized that underreporting is a serious issue, it is very difficult to actually ascertain the degree to which it affects the published statistics of crimes. Therefore, it is worthwhile to confine the study in relation to the registered crimes which are being published in Crime in India annually.
Having thrown light on the processes through which the crime data are generated, collected, and published and the limitations of these, in next chapter one may proceed to crime data analysis of Assam and its districts and highlight the changes in trend, patterns and compositions of criminal behaviour over time.
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