Crime control: Police must adopt Hong Kong model

Razzak Raza

Young people are the future leaders of the country. In Bangladesh the youth dominate the population. More than half of the population is youth. So the trend of young people's behaviour determines the national standard. But young people are getting involved in criminal activities at an alarming rate. The places of the so-called top-terrors are easily being occupied by young criminals who are not in the police list. Youth from respectable families are stepping into the dark world of violent crimes like murder, robbery, abduction and extortion. A group of young people murdered one of their peers only for a wrist-watch. Reports published in the newspapers are depicting disappointing development in our young community.
   
   25,000 young criminals
   It is believed that some 25,000 young men are involved in criminal activities across the country. Among them 10,000 juvenile criminals are active in the Dhaka Metropolitan City. These young criminals have hardly crossed their teens. The Detectives of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police enlisted as many as 1658 young gang stars. They are now on the run. Last year 1,810 children were arrested in different criminal charges through out the country. Many of these juveniles come from respectable families.
   Most of the young criminals are addicted to drugs. They are involved in criminal activities like road and highway robbery, extortion, theft, auto theft and murders to buy drugs. Thousands of underage criminals -- some of whom carry deadly fire arms -- are active in Dhaka city. Police have been trying to control street robbery accompanied with murders, where teenagers are believed to be involved.
   Criminal activities by juveniles are taken very leniently. People under the age of 18 years are termed children by the UN International Children Charter. In Bangladesh, children are dealt with in accordance with the Children Act-1974. A child is defined as the person under the age of sixteen years in the Children Act-1974. This act has guaranteed the juvenile offenders with a package of humane treatment.
   
   Corrective measure
   Children involved in criminal activities should be tried differently in a special court. The mode of punishment of the under aged criminals is corrective and no children should be awarded with capital punishment.
   But only statutory leniency or constitutional safe guard is not enough to keep away the youths from criminal activities. So, time has come to think something different to stop the young people becoming delinquent. The arrest of these young people will add to the performance of the police officers. But merely arrest will not save the young posterity of the nation from going astray.
   Police are the first Government agency to encounter the juvenile delinquency. Guardians with their drug addicted young sons come to the police stations so that the Officers-in-charge do something for the young. Becoming unable to control their young children some guardians proceed to the police stations. As the guardians do not take proper care of their children, they get involved in drug dealing or become custodian of fire arms of the notorious criminals. In a word, the society-produced young criminals are a serious concern to the police. The police have very little to control or guide the society. But the bad products of the society are the bad headache of the police.
   So, the police can come forward to keep the young people in the right track. They can organize the young people under an umbrella and guide them to the correct path to travel. It would be an special programme to foster the young generation to become law abiding citizens. The police should do something with the vast youth population of the country so that they may not turn offenders. They should address the potential problems at present .The police strategy of fighting crime must experience a shift from police station to the society.
   
   Over 9 lakh JPC members
   The Hong Kong police launched a social programme focusing the young generation to educate them in the police way. In 1974 they started bringing the young people under an organization name the Junior Police Call (JPC) under the direct supervision of the Police Public Relations Branch (PPRB) the JPC drew the attention of the young people and soon became one of the largest youth organizations in the world with strong police ties. The Hong Kong police organized the juveniles targeting the following objectives:
   1. To encourage and improve communication and mutual understanding between the Police and the youths of Hong Kong
   2. To foster Police-youth partnership in the fight against crime
   3. To develop young people's sense of responsibilities towards the society and to instill positive values in them
   4. To provide a wide range of activities and training for young people in order to equip them as future leaders and develop their potential leadership
   The JPC is an ever growing largest youth organization in Hong Kong. Since 1974 over 9,00,000 young people have joined JPC as members. Currently the JPC has nearly 1,30,000 members .JPC has extended their activities up to the primary and the secondary schools. They formed 452 primary and 372 secondary school clubs. They run school clubs for the purpose of-
   Recruiting JPC members
   Disseminating anti crime message within the school.
   Promoting JPC activities within the school.
   Training students to perform crowd control duties in schools.
   Providing suitable students for school perfect system.
   The JPC is a social movement among the young people with the Hong Kong Police at the driver's seat. JPC is a registered society, with its headquarters established in the PPRB and branches distributed in twenty police districts. The police- community relations officers of individual police district is responsible for all officers of its JPC branch.
   There are four categories of members in the JPC movement, such as-
   members (age from I to 25)
   leaders (age from 16-25)
   advanced leaders (age from 16-25)
   staff officers (age above 25)
   No budget allocation
   The JPC movement could draw the attentions of many financial companies (national and international) working in Hong Kong. They sponsor every programme of JPC. The JPC chalk out competitions, training programmes, foreign tours, and, all the programs are financed from out sourcing. So no extra monetary allocation is needed from the Hong Kong Govt.
   The Hong Kong model of youth organization could easily be launched in Bangladesh. For Bangladesh Police has shifted their attention very recently towards Community Policing. The JPC movement is a proven path to establish a youth-police partnership in solving community problems arising in young domain of the community. The police must do some thing to stop the process of youth degeneration. The young people must be stopped to become criminals.
   In Bangladesh there are boy scouts, Girls' Guide and BNCC movement. But none of the movement focuses attention towards juvenile delinquency. So, it the police who should come forward to educate the youth to be law abiding and police friendly citizens of the country.
   In view to building a police-youth partnership in solving community problems Bangladesh Police can buy the idea of JPC and implement it in their own ways. Youth-police partnership organization could be named as Police-Juvenile Community Corps (PJCC) or Police-Kishore Shamaj Shangha.
   There is a post of a Public Relations Officer at the Police Head Quarters. This officer is from BCS (Information-General) Cadre. Though he works with the police, he does not belong to the force. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has an external publicity wing. Officers of BCS (information) Cadre used to be posted there. But recently these posts are manned by the officers of the BCS (Foreign Affairs) cadre. Because the job of maintaining public relations in the overseas countries are better performed by the officers of the same cadre than it is done by the officers from outside. Moreover, the example of the Armed Forces is there. The ISPR is manned by the officers among the Forces. The police, thus, should take the responsibility of maintaining public relations on their own shoulders.
   There should be a Public Relations and Community Policing Wing in the Police Head Quarters. A DIG (Public Relations and Community Policing -PR&CP) will be in charge of the wing. The DIG would be assisted by one or more AIG-s in the Head Quarters. Moreover, there should be an Additional DIG in every Police Range as the immediate in-charge of the public relations and community policing. The Police-Juvenile Community Corps will be added as a component of the Community Policing .However, the overall responsibility of the public relations and community policing throughout the police range will lie upon the Range DIG.
   In every police district there should be a Public Relations and Community Policing Officer of the rank of an Addl.SP. The Addl.SP of Public Relations and Community Policing with the assistance of one or two ASP's will co-ordinate the Police-Juvenile Community Corps as well as the function of community policing. ASP (HQ) will be given with the responsibility to run the PJCC for the time being. At the Thana level a sub inspector under the guidance of the Officer-in-Charge will organize the PJCC. The post of the Service Delivery Officer, introduced recently could be given the responsibility of the PJCC. The PJCC will set up junior clubs down to the primary school level .The junior club members will be oriented with a view to fight crime with the police and build them as future leaders of the country.
   The PJCC will attach the young community to the police with a partnership of friendship. The police will guide the members of the PJCC through orientation sessions, visiting police units, seeing the senior police officers and excursions in home and abroad.
   At regular intervals the members of the PJCC will sit together and discuss the contemporary issues that affect the lives of the juveniles as well as the citizens. The organizational set up for the PJCC would be that of the BNCC or Girls' Guide. However, a permanent organogram of the command and control, work-plan, aim and objectives the procedure and rules and regulations will be determined. The members of the PJCC will be invited to all programs arranged by the police. They will be invited to the annul Police Week, Passing Out parades of the trainee police members. Competitions of various means should be organized to ignite the knowledge of the PJCC members so that they could be made interested in police work.
   If we admit that the era of community policing is knocking at the door of Bangladesh Police, the time of uniting the young community by police has already arrived. The youth are the future leaders of the country, but at the same time, they are potential offenders. Now the option is there - should we lead the young to the helm of the boat or behind the bars?

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Dhiraj Kumar Nath

Archbishop William Temple of United Kingdom was the person who coined the term 'welfare state' in 1941. It was common belief that he contrasted the concept of Warfare State of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Of course, the equivalent term sozialstact was in use in 1870 in Germany and the Italians used the word stato sociale i.e. social state about two centuries back. The French word Etat-Providence indicating the Providence State or a state of well-being was known to the public. But it was in fact, the Chinese Emperor Wang Angshi of Song Dynasty in the 11th century who introduced the welfare activities in the state by providing agricultural loan and high yielding variety of seed and fertilizer to the farmers.
   The renowned socialist T H Marshall identified the welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare and capitalism. The concept of welfare state in many countries is considered as the harbinger of new concept where "cradle - to - grave" services should be a reality and primary responsibility of the state. Sometime, it was seen as an alternative or 'middle way" between communism and capitalism.
   The application of the concept of welfare state is now a day felt very strongly to ensure the social security of individual, equity and justice and above all guarantee of state for the welfare of its citizens which must eventually ensure sustainable income, health care and education facilities.
   These welfare activities must consist of the sum of publicly financed and administered programs of three general types such as: income maintenance, social welfare services, and health care services. The purpose of such programs and expenditures are, "to maintain the income of individuals or families in the face of loss of earnings due to a wide variety of contingencies of life; to provide a variety of supportive and development of personal services which might amount to income support in kind, or be ancillary to income transfers and to finance and /or provide curative or preventive medical care."
   To be precise, the state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens in a state with welfare concept. All aspects of welfare are considered as 'Safety Nets' to safeguard the interest of the citizens.
   It must be universal because it should cover every person as a matter of right. Welfare should not be considered as charity by the state but a responsibility of independent nation to see its citizens honest, educated, and disciplined and above all, not dishonest, immoral and unruly.
   In fact, while the concept of public welfare emerges as fundamental principle of the country, the incidents of corruption must reduce substantially. Some countries like Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and Germany spend more than 30 percent of their GDP for the welfare of the people at large. This is the major reason for which Transparency International evaluates these countries as top non-corrupt countries almost every year.
   During my stay in Toronto, Canada, I have had the opportunity to discuss with many Bangladeshi persons working there as immigrants. Many of them were in better jobs in Bangladesh both in Government and non-Government sector. Most of them were brilliant students of different universities of Bangladesh. They have left the country for an uncertain destiny only on the assurance that the state will look after them in case of unemployment, disability and distress and provide them free medical care, support to quality education. Above all, they will have the pleasure of living in a non- corrupt society with absolute accountability and transparency.
   In Canada, Health and Social Transfer Program, Universal Family Allowances Act, Federal Old Age Pension, Children Allowances and benefits and other Social Security, Housing, Health services packages made a citizen convinced that he can survive free from any problem of his life. The Government is taking the stock of every citizen from his birth to death and monitoring his income, education and way of living irrespective services in the government and private establishments. Even a person is unemployed; he can get allowances of CD 900 per month including housing for his accommodation. Many students are also availing the scope of education expenses from the government to build their career here in this country. Interesting enough, every person above the age of 65 can get CD 600 as old age benefits in addition to the pension he gets from the government. All these benefits compelled a person to be law abiding and the tendency of corruption can not find place in their mind because any lapses might cause a deterrent punishment to the delinquent.
   
   Safety nets
   In Bangladesh, there are also provisions of some safety nets for the poor in the name of widow allowance, old age allowance, housing, VDG etc. But these are very inadequate for the hard core poor and disabled persons. Sometimes, these are very costly to draw from the authority appearing before them physically. Our poverty reduction strategy paper to attain the millennium development goals to reduce the poverty by half by 2015 contains prescriptions of World Bank and co-financiers which are neither capitalist nor based on welfare concept. We have limited resources but registration of death and birth, compulsory primary education, control of spurious drugs, advocacy for primary health care and family planning, use of safe drinking water etc do not require enough resources. It should be the pious intention of the government and the bureaucracy to make the country resourceful and build up capable and healthy human resources.
   Local government bodies and NGOs are enough to mobilize the people toward better life and make them non- corrupt.
   Whenever a problem is observed we speak of the formation of a commission or changes in the law. Existing rules and practices are enough to address many issues provided pious intention is prevail and welfare concept plays dominant role in every sphere of activities.
   We have completed 36 years of national life disputing on many issues some of which are redundant, frivolous and unnecessary. The spirit of freedom struggle is in great distress with the emergence of greed and personal gain.. South East Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Korea with less educational background have changed the destiny of their people with the commitment of the Government and the public at large. The basic catalyst that worked was the commitment towards the welfare of people and to see that hundred flowers to bloom together. Another important factor responsible was to abide by the rules without any corrupt intention and vicious attitude to avail the personal benefits at the cost of nation.
   The Sidr has shown a new dimension in our planning to ensure security of the public at large. Food security has emerged as number one problem with the estimated shortage of about 10 lakhs tons of food to be imported from abroad. The stock of 7.35 lakhs tons is quite inadequate to overcome this colossal disaster This time around 13 lakhs tons of Aman paddy has destroyed and 38 per cent of production wasted in the cyclone. The poultry, livestock and fisheries, which were almost main stay of people of coastal areas, reduced to nil as the source of earning of the lower middle class population. This will eventually have definite impact on the security of the people and the achievement of millennium development goals.
   It will therefore be an expedient decision to form of a social security forum in addition to better business forum.

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