Police brutality and nudge theory

Over the past year, we have noticed an increase in the number of protests against violence in the country, from the brutal torture resulting in the death of Jayaraj and Bennicks in July 2020 to the curfew in J&K and to the farmers protest on Republic Day.

In the protests, we observe that police personnel always use sticks, tear gas and batons as a skewed mechanism for crowd-control. This brings to the fore Maslow’s law of instrument which is a cognitive bias that involves an over-reliance on a familiar tool. Abraham Maslow has said: “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

With violence putting police brutality in the spotlight, it is realistic to use Nudge theory, which is a concept in behavioural economics and is a positive reinforcement or indirect suggestion to implicitly steer people to make certain decisions.

In recent times, despite its limitations, the theory has been put to use in social engineering and public policy.

A survey statistic reported that an average police officer works 14 hours a day— 6 hours more than what the Model Police Act of India recommends. Three out of four personnel said that the overwork affected their mental and physical health and one-third of them confessed that they would willingly give up the job in exchange for one with the same salary and perks. Also, considering the number of judicial cases pending and the salary of the policemen not on par with similar private bodies is a cause for frustration in a cop’s mind.

The general suggestions for incentivising the police include providing sufficient leaves and monetary benefits.

In the purview of the Nudge theory, we see that monetary incentives and benefits to policemen indirectly prevent them from misusing ‘lathi’ (stick)— this falls under the philosophical idea of ‘Libertarian Paternalism’ in Nudge Theory as coined by Cass Sunstein and Thaler in 2008.

The core idea is that the choice architecture of people changes voluntarily due to how they reflect on the incentive and the bright enthusiasm it provides them with, as opposed to frustration in a non-incentivised environment. To do away with work-based frustrations, personal incentives like the choice of place in patrolling duty and health and salary bonuses in a timely manner are more important, especially when it comes to lower-ranked officials.

In a 2018 survey of 15,562 respondents spanning 22 states on the perceptions regarding policing, the Lokniti team at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) found that less than 25% of Indians trust the police highly (as compared to 54% for the army). This is proof of the distrust and hostility of the public towards the police.

To solve this problem, the right kind of nudge would be through the public such as having a provision of a community centre for every locality for easier problem resolution— i.e. providing a single-window interaction between the citizens in the locality and the police. This is analogous with the out-of-court case resolutions in the judicial system or the Bangalore One Centres created by the government in Karnataka.

Another nudge could be a monthly or fortnightly meeting where local communities get to interact with the police regarding the issues they face. This appears like the decentralisation of police at the most possible level, closest to the citizens. In this way, it is possible to induce positive changes in an otherwise stringent, overworked and brutal environment of police officers through policies that utilise a ‘nudge’ in their due process.

(The writer is a student of public policy, Mount Carmel College, Bengaluru)