Featured Analysis — The Problem with a Good Thing: Dangers of Demanding Justice, by Rachel Wahl

Police officers locking the gate of a police station, during a protest condemning
the rape of a 23-year-old woman. Photo cropped. (Tsering Topgyal / AP)

The Problem with a Good Thing: Dangers of Demanding Justice
Rachel Wahl

 

“Hold police accountable for rapes” cries out a headline of the Deccan Herald on February 23rd of this year. The paper is quoting women’s rights activists in New Delhi, India, in response to the brutal rape and murder of a young woman on December 16, 2012. The girl was on her way home after seeing a movie at a shopping mall. She and a male friend paid a fare and boarded what turned out to be an unlicensed bus. Once inside, she was brutally beaten and raped by six men. The girl and her friend were then thrown from the bus. Later, she died from her injuries, which included damage to her internal organs from a metal rod that her rapists shoved inside of her.

The incident generated waves of fierce protests across India and the world, with the police on the receiving end of much public anger. The public and politicians alike blame police inaction for widespread violence against women in India. Too often, police in India refuse to register rape cases or discourage women from doing so. Moreover, reports of police violence against women make many women afraid to go to a police station at all, let alone to report such a traumatic experience. If women do succeed in registering a case, the police may fail to investigate or take any action against suspects.  Protestors demand that impunity for rapists cease and that police bring perpetrators to justice.

Could there be a downside to this inspiring and crucial demand for justice?

As news poured in of this horrific rape and the public response, I thought of the past year I spent in and around New Delhi interviewing police officers about torture.

“Investigations require patience” one New Delhi police officer explained. But such patience is impossible, he pointed out, when a quick verdict and certain punishment are expected by the media, the public, and the politicians who in India control the police. Even though confessions made to police are technically inadmissible in court, officers often use torture to extract other types of “evidence” against the accused. This Delhi officer echoed many other officers when he explained, “Once the police have a reasonable suspicion then that person is tortured.”

These interviews suggest that the current media attention and public pressure on the police are the perfect storm that leads to arbitrary arrest and torture. Such pressure does cut through police indifference and motivate them to act. But without attention to the quality of police action, pressuring the police to perform often motivates them to arrest quickly (rather than carefully) and use torture to extract a confession and information that can be used to frame a case against the suspects.

The use of torture has the potential to undermine the effectiveness of reforms that could result from the public outcry across India. Protestors in India are advocating for stricter laws to punish perpetrators of rape. But stricter laws are unlikely to deter violence against women until potential assailants believe that they – rather than whomever the police arrest first – will be charged with the crime.

This is also important for the overall functioning of the criminal justice system in India. Torture can increase the risk and the consequences of convicting the innocent. It can also enable the guilty to go free: while police are rarely punished for using torture, suspects who prove that it occurred are often acquitted.

And it not only hurts Indians to have a criminal justice system that careens between inaction and brutality. As The Guardian noted on December 16, 2010, a Wikileaks-released cable quotes the American coordinator of counter-terrorism activities lamenting that India is not an equal partner in fighting terrorism, because “India’s police and security forces are overworked and hampered by bad police practices, including the wide-spread use of torture in interrogations, rampant corruption, poor training, and a general inability to conduct solid forensic investigations.” Torture and the failure to address the pressures that lead to it cause harm beyond Indian borders.

Police violence also undermines justice by making people afraid of helping victims or serving as witnesses. As reported earlier in The Wall Street Journal, the male friend of the recent victim recalled that nobody stopped to help them after they had been thrown from the bus. He believes this is because everyone was afraid of being summoned to the police station as a witness. The police often coerce people to implicate themselves through violence, so people stay away from police stations.

This problem is not limited to India. Ken Burns’ most recent documentary, The Central Park Five, details the way five young men were wrongly convicted and imprisoned in 1989 for the brutal rape of the Central Park jogger. The press, the public, and the police wanted justice, and those five African American boys seemed to be likely suspects. We have heard very little about the six men accused of the rape, torture, and murder of the latest victim in Delhi, but we know they are poor and from a slum: usual suspects for the Delhi police.

If people continue to believe that the police practice arbitrary arrest and torture to close cases, stricter laws and punishments will not deter rape. As several commentators have noted, certain punishment is more of a deterrent than harsh punishment. The police must be held to higher standards of investigation if potential rapists are to feel that they – rather than whomever the police happen to arrest first – will be held responsible for their crimes.

Link to articles referenced in this post by clicking on the underlined title of the publication.

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Rachel Wahl is a Ph.D. Candidate at New York University. She recently completed twelve months of fieldwork in North India, which included extensive interviews with police officers, human rights activists, and public officials on the subject of torture. She will be presenting on her research at the Third Annual Prison Studies Group Graduate Student Conference, “Police, Prisons, and Power,” on April 12, 2013.

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Indian women carry placards as they march to mourn the death of a gang rape victim in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013. India's top court says it will decide whether to suspend lawmakers facing sexual assault charges as thousands of women gathered at the memorial to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to demand stronger protection for their safety. The banners read "India won't tolerate women's insult and We want respect not violence in life." (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin)

Indian women carry placards as they march to mourn the death of a gang rape victim in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013. India’s top court says it will decide whether to suspend lawmakers facing sexual assault charges as thousands of women gathered at the memorial to independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi to demand stronger protection for their safety. The banners read “India won’t tolerate women’s insult and We want respect not violence in life.” (AP Photo/ Dar Yasin)

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