Inculcating Democratic Policing in India: A Psychological Perspective

Police is the first step in the ladder of the criminal justice system who are responsible for upholding the human rights of each and every citizen. Hence, effective policing is imperative for the implementation of law and order and in building up of an institution of justice. Indian policing needs to undergo a sea change in order to redress the grievances of common people in more democratic and humane way without regard to their affiliations and selfish motives.A police officer to be genuine in his conduct should necessarily be a good human being. She/he should a person of ideas, vision and philosophy characterised by a sense of empathy and moral values. A Civilian police officer should be very patient in hearing the complaints of the public and should be able to put his/her into the psychological shoes of another and experience what the client is experiencing to execute positive action. At the same time he should maintain unconditional positive regard towards the perpetrators so that he could act as an instrument of change in the perpetrator in motivating himself towards progressive change. In every organisation the human element is the most pivotal part. For policing to be successful and result-oriented, first of all the personnel's personality features should match with what is demanded by the job rather than modernising it with most modern sophisticated investigative machineries. For this, psychometric testing to assess personality has to be included as part of police selection and training in the field of positive psychology, spirituality, empathy training,counselling skills also should be part of the continuous modernisation programme. The evergrowing science of psychology has to be utilised to make our police the best in the world for Swami Vivekananda said "Psychology is the science of the sciences."