Mapping of victim data can help reduce crime

GS Bajpai

Professor, National Law University, Delhi

The incident of murder and alleged gangrape of a Dalit woman in Hathras has brought simmering tensions to a boil. It is unfortunate, however, that instead of examining the issue from a novel lens, all actors and reactors have chosen to blow the dust off musty old narratives and re-purpose them to the particular facts of the case. History is proof that neither of these actions or reactions will restore this particular victim to her rightful place, nor will the same succeed in deterring future occurrence of these and other crimes.

Like Nirbhaya, the Hathras case will be forgotten soon. The lessons we choose to learn from such cases are lacking in terms of a significant impact on our criminal justice system (CJS), other than continually ineffectual penalty enhancements. Nobody asks if the police or other agencies had any role to play before such incidents occur. Over reliance on post-incident trajectories than pre-crime ones only ensures a free flow of the spate of such incidents. And, hence, incidents like Nirbhaya, Unnao, Kathua and Hathras recur.

There are three aspects of Hathras-like incidents, an understanding of which can have fundamental implications upon improving our CJS.

First, is there any process of victimisation in such type of cases where multiple processes culminate into the occurrence of the incident? Secondly, who are the likely victims, what is their profile and how do they become vulnerable to such victimisation? Thirdly, do our police have the competence for crime prevention?

It is naive to believe that the Hathras case occurred in a vacuum or that the choice of victim and her victimisation was coincidental. Victimological research proffers that several unnoticeable interactions take place before the incidence of crime. In Hathras, the process of victimisation must have occurred subtly and must be chronologically traceable. The families of the accused and the victim were known to each other. Reportedly, they also had interaction at several levels. This process also includes various subtle and minor developments until the incidence.

Generally speaking, casual friendships, conflict in relationships, or other aspects in relationships are crucial in forming a chain, culminating into an incidence of crime. This is how a target of crime becomes a ‘just’ target.

Victimology pre-supposes a set of factors which tend to make a person vulnerable to crime. The profiling of the victim in the Indian society is crucial. It can be inferred from the Hathras incident that the victim came from a humble background, was a Dalit and had a relatively lower socio-economic profile. Poverty and disadvantage make people vulnerable to all manners and forms of suffering. Poverty is not merely about a lack of financial resources but also about a weakened ability to resist. Access to justice and exercising of fundamental rights is difficult, if not impossible, where a person lacks resources. All such factors of disadvantage converge to make a person vulnerable. One would hardly find a resourceful person confronting such risk exposures in India. Those working under poor conditions in unorganised sectors —labourers, domestic servants, and contractual workers — have greater chances of being victimised.

In fact, the socio-economic background and occupational characteristics of a person influence their lifestyle. Such a lifestyle, according to victimologists, is a crucial factor in exposing such persons to several high-risk situations. This knowledge would explain the victimisation incident of Hathras.

Vulnerability or risk of victimisation is not limited to such individual factors alone. Geographical locations also determine the likelihood of proneness to crime due to environmental vulnerabilities. This also means crimes are not random probabilities, but are bound by temporal and spatial constraints. The ‘Broken Window’ theory in the US became very attractive inasmuch as it spurred the police towards locational and situational crime prevention planning in neglected localities.

The core issue is that victimological data and information remain undeveloped and under-utilised in this country by the police. There are ways and means to collate and use such information to plan effective crime prevention and victimisation reduction programmes by the police.

For example, the police can map victim data and information to carry out risk mapping and analysis of vulnerability. There are potential victims everywhere. There are victimological conditions which have reached their ‘tipping point’ and are likely to culminate into full-fledged incidents. If such mapping and risk surveys are carried out by the police to identify vulnerable groups or individuals, prevention plans can be used to avert such incidents.

Both crime profiling or victimisation profiling are yet to reach the shores of our nation. There is a need to understand that crime is independent of the law as well as the institutions mandated by law to enforce itself. The crime rate will automatically go down if victim-proneness — the factors affecting victimisation — are reduced and vice versa. The police have failed in the past and will fail again in the future, unless factors of victimisation are addressed and criminogenic conditions are controlled.

There are potential victims and offenders and there is need to identify them before the commission of a crime. Every person becomes vulnerable to crime before becoming a victim of crime and if the interventions are deployed at the former stage, crime can be averted.

As a measure of crime prevention, this is more effective than deterrence through harsher punishments. As much as 45 per cent crime in every society is situational. The remaining crime is due to fundamental reasons linked with the motivation, socialisation and personality of the offenders. The former can be controlled more easily than the latter.

Situational crime prevention (SCP) is now the default approach in several countries. SCP is a crime-reduction technique based on the premise that by plugging the opportunities of crime commission, crime can be reduced significantly. Crimes are committed if they are easy to commit. It is, therefore, important to make the occurrence of crime difficult. To do that, a ‘target hardening’ is necessary — victims must be better guarded and more empowered. If we do not take note of these lessons from Hathras, its recurrence is inevitable.

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