HUMANISING THE POLICE

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 civilization and concern and participation in a
society. It is a transpicious crucible wherein the negative discharges of evolution
crumble to be transformed into efficient propellants of natural evolution.
Humanism is an eerie solvent that 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. William Wordsworth in “Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Titem
Abbey” beautifully brings out the salubrious, mellowing effects of humanism.
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt

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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 pari passu
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 sensitized to inhuman exposures. As the police
leaders themselves are victims of this infaust mould of mind, tremendous
organizational 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, policing would become a meaningful and relevant
service to society.
The test of the Police as a humanized organisation is its acceptance by the
society as 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 have cohabited long enough with its disrepute.
A decision anon t furbish its image as a humanized 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 that are obfuscated
by the strokes 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,

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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
humanized.
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
wherewithals 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 organizational 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 humanizing the police.
An earnest effort from the highest level to infuse the creme de la creme,
characterized 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 centers largely fail to offer quality to the training to humanize 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 humanized
policing practices is inevitable to keep the police excubant against the depravity
of the modem society. The psychology faculty of the centre should endeavor to

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build character and strengthen human fibers. The training centers should lay
emphasis on an attitudinal change in the recruits and develop the skills of
humanized policing. The training centers should give the impression of being
temples, dedicated to humanizing 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 molded 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 humanize 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
humanize 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 counter pose 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 make 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 sensitization 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
humanized.

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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.” 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 analyze 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 materializing mobility in an intended direction as an
addendum to disparate motivation factors. Efforts to humanize 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 b
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 realization 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
social ladder, can be generated in the police by installing a mortal fear of inhuman
acts through exemplary punishments.

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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 humanizing the police. It
saves the police from the antilogy of committing criminal acts to meet the ends
of justice. Al efforts at humanizing the police prove infructuous until the police
continue to be at the mercy of violent methods for results.
A genuine effort at humanizing the police should begin with the adoption of
modem policing techniques and scientific methods to instill 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
humanizing the police should be built.
ELIMINATION OF CONSTABULARY
The constabulary that 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 taste.
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 conduct
at the cutting-edge 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.

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CHANGE OF UNIFORM
A change in the existing police uniform is an issue worth assessing as a device
to humanize the police force. The present khaki uniform inspires a mood of
arrogance and savagery by its psychological association with power and
repression. Change in uniform to a friendly and soothing shade 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 release 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 humanized and command a semblance of public respect
and confidence. Intelligent adaptations in the extant criminal laws to interdict
inhuman policing methods and provide wherewithal 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 color. Also, all cases of
violence and physical outrage committed in police custody should be made
punishable with exemplary penalties by special legislations. Such extreme
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
mad non-bailable. This will restrict both the police and the judiciary from
showing favors to some criminals as quid pro quo 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 favors and disfavors to
criminals.

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CIVIL LIBERTY CELLS

External controls must walk pari passu with ingenerate encraty 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 pernoctation 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
conduct.
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 facilitates
their opening-up to give vent to their latitant human contents.
An effort to humanize 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. 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.

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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 are 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 heavy responsibilities and tasks to spare his
time for the niceties of human qualities.
An important measure in humanizing 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 are 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 humanizing 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 organizationally. This measure will release the police
organisation from unwarranted pressures that add to the dehumanization
process and also enhances its legitimacy as the guardian of order and security of
human interests.

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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 specialization 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 are humanized; the police also should appear
humanized. While public relations professionals can handle the job from the
organizational level, an insight to the police about the rudiments of public
relations is sine qua non if it is to appear humanized 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 humanized organisation play the role of
humaneness to fulfill 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 humanizing 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 humanized image ab infra requires the assistance of skeely
image-building technicians and adroit operations by police leaders. This forms
the desinent and vital stage in humanizing 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 that 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

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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
humanizing the police lies in emotionally integrating it with humanistic causes by
esoteric organizational 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 propensities in a hierarchical setup like the police should permeate
from above should the organisation be humanized and its lower strata identify
it with their organizational self. The police leaders should set standards of’ human
comportment for others in the organisation to make it the substruction of
organizational 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 polarization of
dulcet human propensities from nefandous policing activities in the present
police setup is a serious organizational 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 lose 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 vitalize the police with genuine human qualities.

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