Policing in India: Technology and Crime Prevention

The twenty first century of technology all over the world is reshaping both the criminal justice system and policing at an unprecedented rate. The latest technologies not only make practical tasks quicker, more efficient and more functional, but also enhance the perception of police as high-tech crime fighters. From the perspective of society as a whole, the best and most useful task that law enforcement agencies can carry out is crime prevention such as surveillance, crime analysis, and offender tracking. Police surveillance is one activity justified by its potential effect on crime prevention. New technological innovations have been developed to prevent crime and to improve the performance of the police. In India despite the adoption of seemingly sophisticated technologies and methodologies, police investigational work remains relatively low-tech. Changes in both the hard and soft technology of policing appear to be transforming local, state, and federal policing departments in a number of fundamental ways but some studies have raised questions about how much has really changed. Crime is increasing day by day with the increase in the complexity of the civilization. It needs a compatibly technological up-gradation to prevent crime and safeguard people of the country. It is in this backdrop that the present paper aims to analyse how and why Indian policing system is lagging behind in technological advancement and producing desired results.