AN ever-expanding archive of unanswered injustices is attributed to the police. Public discourse, generally, describes the police as a case of a rotten basket or a poisoned tree producing bad apples. The police leadership explains that deviance and corruption are a case of a few bad apples in an otherwise healthy basket. Meanwhile, political executives generally hold the police exclusively responsible for the failings of the force and refuse to accept their role in the inability to make the police responsive and accountable.

People perceive the police as incorrigibly corrupt and brutal. It is viewed as an inefficient and discriminatory organisation with ineffective internal or external accountability checks.

On its part, the police often rationalise deviance as a consequence of chronic underfunding and unfair demands. It cannot be denied that police authority, its limitations, and the demands on it have the potential to push the greedy and the weak down the slippery slope of deviance and corruption. However, an organisation such as the police, which has the power and the authority to intrude into the private lives of citizens, must have an effective mechanism to check the abuse of power.

Accountability is a broad term and has been defined to include, inter alia, answerability, responsiveness, efficient management, and obedience to external laws. Police accountability thus cannot be restricted to just punitive measures; the approach needs to be corrective. An effective accountability system must have efficient and non-discriminatory internal and external accountability mechanisms as well as an enabling environment to enforce accountability in a transparent and fair manner.

Police accountability cannot be restricted to punitive measures; the approach needs to be corrective.

Powers for internal accountability of the police are vested exclusively with supervisory police officers, who award punishments to the ill-disciplined. Lacking confidence in the internal accountability procedures of the police, victims usually do not report police corruption and deviance to supervisory officers. Cases reported often fall victim to the “cop culture”, where a police officer protects his colleague or there are inadequate institutional arrangements to process complaints. Inconsistent and unfair decisions of police commanders against junior officers also significantly harm the value of police disciplinary proceedings.

As for external accountability of the police, in addition to critical recourse to courts, the governance structure of the police, the Police Order 2002, provides for civilian oversight and checks in the form of the Police Safety Commission (PSC) and Police Com­plaint Authority (PCA). The ombudsperson, the auditor general’s office, media and civil society also play an important role in making the police accountable.

There is a lack of effective institutional arrangements in the criminal justice system to reduce the disconnect between the police, the judiciary, lawyers, prosecutors and prisons. Punjab and Khyber Pakh­tu­nkhwa, despite following the democratic Police Order since its promulgation in 2002, never made the PSC and PCA functional. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has just recently promulgated the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Ordinance 2016, which provides for the PSC and PCA. Sindh and Balochistan, unfortunately, do not have an inclusive and accountable governance structure as they reverted to the colonial Police Act 1861 in 2011.

Critical interventions are required to strengthen internal and external accountability of the police while simultaneously building an enabling environment. First, internal disciplinary proceedings need to be made fair and consistent by regulating the discretion of supervisory officers. For this purpose, police need to adopt the ‘discipline matrix’, a tool used by different police organisations to ensure similar treatment for misconduct. The matrix provides for minimum and maximum punishments for each kind of indiscipline and the officer awarding punishments cannot award less than the minimum and more than the maximum punishment. This checks favouritism, victimisation and the ‘sifarish culture’.

Additionally, there is a need for management initiatives such as training and periodic refresher courses in ethics, human rights and modern investigation skills; performance management through better evaluation and promotions; peer review sessions; early intervention practices such as coaching and counselling; and the permanent retirement of the incorrigibly corrupt.

For external accountability, the establishment of the PSC and PCA is essential to promote civilian oversight and inclusive accountability of the police. Articles 77 and 89 of the Police Order 2002 may be amended to include leaders of the opposition nominating independent members for the provincial and national PSCs instead of the governor and the president, who normally belong to the ruling party. This will improve the political balance in safety commissions where numbers matter.

The role of the courts is crucial both in term of individual as well as organisational accountability of the police. District criminal justice coordination committees, inter alia, need to be made more effective through effective institutional oversight.

International and regional experiences, such as the Department of Internal Affairs and Use of Force Reports (US), and Kerala Police Act 2011(Article 96), which makes police officers liable to report acts of torture and corruption, can also be examined. The Independent Commission Against Corruption of Hong Kong is another success story, which helped transform a terribly corrupt police unit by focusing on education, prevention and investigation.

Police accountability will remain elusive unless supported by an environment which checks rather than promotes police deviance. It is the responsibility of the political executive to remove the excuses for corruption in the police such as the lack of funds to investigate cases, inadequate fuel supply and weak welfare support.

In the words of Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, “there is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction”. Likewise, there needs to be an end to the habit of passing blame on to others. All relevant actors, including police commanders and other actors of the criminal justice system, the political executive, media and civil society must concentrate on realising and doing justice to their respective roles in police accountability. Effective accountability can only be achieved when all the relevant actors are sensitive to their own roles, aligned and performing.

Police accountability is not just about making the police accountable; it essentially involves protection of the fundamental rights of citizens. Thus it needs to be taken more seriously by all those who matter in the process.

The writer is a former police officer.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2016