Crime, Policing and State Building

Pakistan has experienced a stark rise in its level of criminal activity. In particular, violent crimes have increased threefold over the past decade. For example, over the past ten years Punjab has seen almost a 90% increase in per capita crime against property (per 10,000 persons). This suggests that fighting crime remains a fundamental public policy challenge for incoming provincial governments. IDEAS, in collaboration with the Lahore Police, aims to establish a project that provides an understanding of where and why crime occurs, what policing strategies, including the use of ICT, are effective in mitigating crime and what factors hinder efficient investigation and processing of criminal cases.

The project has four main components that aim to address these issues:

• The development and deployment of international standard crime mapping tools that build policing capacity and strengthen effective policing at the police station and divisional levels.
• Provide a spatial analysis of crime and its correlates.
• The design and measurement, through rigorous ongoing evaluations, of policing strategies to learn about which strategies are most effective in reducing crime incidence in ‘hot spot’ areas.
• Analyzing the role of investigation in the criminal justice system and mapping the bottlenecks inherent in the criminal justice chain.