Coethnicity and Cops: The Impact of Caste-Segregated Police Stations in India

• In Event: Policing in the Global South

Abstract

We examine caste-segregated police stations in India, i.e., those run by and that cater solely to a minority group. The goal of these institutions—whereby only Scheduled Caste/Tribe complainants can access services—is to facilitate justice delivery and empower the marginalized by allowing complainants to interface with co-ethnic administrators. Such “enclave” representation has implications for social science theories about co-ethnicity, segregation and public services, violence against women (VAW), and hate-crime. Using fine-grained individual-level data from eastern India—where the institutions were expanded following a re-districting process—we carry out difference-in-difference analyses to test the bodies’ impact vis-à-vis a range of outcomes, e.g., case filings, the speed and quality of registrations/investigations, and officer professionalization. We find increases in registrations of hate-crime, including complaints of land grabs and gender-based violence against minority women. The intervention also ensures hate-crimes be more likely to be tackled by senior officers. However, we also highlight unintended consequences of the intervention including crime displacement and bureaucratic inefficiency. Our nuanced findings suggest advantages but also salient disadvantages of ethnicity-based segregation as a means of delivering public (police) services.

Author

• Nirvikar Jassal, London School of Economics