Law and order - also politicised

Dr Rowan Barnsley is the team leader of a UNDP project to design a program for reform of Bangladesh police. The aim is to look at how police could be reformed and strengthened at operational, management and execution level. Dr Barnsley has been involved in police reform and organisational development of police force for over 15 years in many countries. He spoke to Kaushik Sankar Das of The Daily Star about the project and his own perceptions on Bangladesh police force.

Daily Star (DS): Why did UNDP decide to take up a new project on police reform in Bangladesh?
Rowan Barnsley (RB): UNDP, as you know, is involved with projects all over the world. The previous police reform project I was involved in just prior to coming here was in Mozambique. UNDP has recognised that law and order is the basis of stability, for safer and confident community which leads to development and reduction of poverty. UNDP in Bangladesh has been having some discussion with the government of Bangladesh for some time about the whole area of law and order, insecurity, access to justice and rule of law. The outcome of those discussions with the government was putting together a preparatory assistance document which was signed by both sides. This was the first step of a needs analysis of the current situation and also to begin a formulation of a project support from which UNDP and other development partners in collaboration with the government and the police could look at how to resource and best structure a programme to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the police force.

As a result of this document, I was called by UNDP Bangladesh since I was involved with similar projects in other countries. A team was formed with a former Australian police officer, Mr. Glenn Crannage and former IG of Bangladesh Police Md. Shahjahan along with other members representing the police.

DS: What were first steps you took to initiate this project?
RB: We conducted widespread consultations with as many people as possible from various sections of the society. We visited Dhaka, Chittagong and Rajshahi. In all of those areas, we have spoken extensively to NGOs and civil society, spoken to police at all levels from IGP down to chowkidars and dafadars. Also we spoke to business community, lawyers and media persons.

DS: What was the result of these meetings?
RB: There were two key aspects of those meetings. First to get information about their perception on policing and the level of their satisfaction with policing. But the second one was more important. If police is to work effectively in any country they need to understand the needs of the community and the community needs to understand the role of the police. In all our discussions, we tried to gain information and also tried to facilitate sharing the information.

DS: What was the perception of common people about the police that you noticed in those meetings?
RB: It varied, it ranged from some people being satisfied to many people feeling otherwise. It would be fair to say that public perception about the police needs to be changed and improved.

DS: After these meetings, what were immediate needs that you assessed for the reform programme?
RW: In Bangladesh we observed that there were range of views. My observation is many things are politicised in this country. There are strong views whichever subject you want to discuss on. Therefore when you undertake a needs analysis, it's important that you are as objective as possible. We grouped the problems in number of areas, such as community engagement in crime prevention, problems around access to justice and thirdly the problems around crime investigation and prosecution. We also looked at human resource management and training areas and the whole general policing, administration, leadership; how assets are acquired and maintained and finally we looked at over sight of the police, the future vision.

The level of community involvement in preventing crime would certainly benefit from improving. But that's not easy to do. If you look at general policing and public order in Bangladesh, you will see that a lot of police resources are required for public order. It has to be acknowledged that police do have significant public order role. But when it comes to things like access to justice that needs to be improved. Police can not do it all by themselves. I think the number of people under remand in Bangladesh in quite high. If we look at law and order in Bangladesh, one of the conclusions we have come to that there needs to be some sort of agreement across all parts of politics. A broad agreement on what the society wants the police to do in the future. Asking for consensus would be too much in the political context of the country, but it would be good if there were some sort of agreement about a future direction for a national crime strategy.

DS: But would that be possible in a highly politicised society like ours?
RB: The government who is in power in any country has the right and obligation to set policy, it should not be involved in the operational level of policing, police should be independent in solving crime. What I have observed is that law and order has become a political matter in Bangladesh, but it is best for all to come to an agreement on what type of police organisation is needed, secondly to look at ways to reduce external interference. Bangladesh is a very complex society, it's gone through many turmoil since its independence. In many ways it is quite a stable society, but politics does appear to be confrontational.

DS: In recent time, the deteriorating law and order in the country has been getting the most of media attention. Concerns are being expressed from all walks of life. Businessmen being abducted regularly, deaths in police custody, and regular murders, political or otherwise have been a common phenomenon -- these kind of incidents have brought in certain type of distrust among the people about police.
RW: I don't know the facts of the situations, but one of the things that we need to do out of this project is to get a better collection of data and objective analysis of the situations. Another strategy that we recommend is police-media relation. I see lots of negative stories but very few positive ones. Sure there are lots of areas that could be improved, but there are good things being done by the police as well. That also needs to be told.

DS: What about the allegations of human rights abuse in police custody? How is it being addressed in the project?
RW: We have put a number of strategies at place to improve the situation. We have looked at significant training at all levels. The area of investigation has also been given more importance than other issues. At the moment police do lack resources in investigation and in many other areas. They don't even have sufficient vehicles to go to spot regularly for investigation. At the moment, there is a heavy reliance on confessions. But if the police is provided with new investigation skills and forensic facilities, I think the reliance would simply go away. Secondly we need to sensitise the police more to the plight of the vulnerable and the poor and women and children.

DS: What about the allegations of corruption against the police force?
RB: To improve the performance and professionalism of the police force, we are proposing a nine year long programme to be completed in three phases. In the first phase a whole lot of training needs to be done. We need to look at the human resource management system, we need to look at the recruitment system, the promotion system -- all of these must be transparent.

Now training is not just about skills, it also about behavioural change. Then again it is not enough -- there has to be management resource improvement, so that when there are allegations against the police, they can be properly investigated.

You have to do your best to minimise corruption, but we live in world where there is always some element of corruption. We have to put a system in place to reduce it. Of course, the allegation of corruption against the police must be investigated. But it has to be looked at in context. There are other areas as well where corruption is prevalent. It can't be solved overnight. If there is sufficient will by the authorities, I truly believe things will improve.

DS: That's another problem -- usually investigating allegations against the police are done by the police themselves causing uproar. Do you think it is right strategy?
RW: In most countries, this kind of investigations are always done by the police. But the best way to do it is by establishing a professional unit with proper capacity. A lot of thing do tend to get politicised, so it would have to be a very independent , objective group of people doing the investigation. One thing is certain -- misbehaviour by police is not acceptable. You have to establish professional standards and make sure majority of police behave.

DS: In Bangladesh, one policeman is asked to maintain law and order, do investigation and at times also do protocol duties. Is it right?
RW: We have suggested that there needs to more specialisation -- police who are investigators and police doing other things. Most police organisation around the world have done that. Secondly, we have observed that the resources could be used more effectively in protocol duties. There is a need to have a closer look at how police duties are allocated. It will require good management. There are more than one hundred thousand police in Bangladesh, if we can increase the productivity of each officer by ten percent, then you will have ten thousand more police. That's what we aim to do.