DailyPost 2504
NATIONAL DATA BASE OF CRIME & CRIMINALS
Digitalization of Police functioning has been on since the 1990s and people familiar this field would remember CCIS, Crime Criminal Information System which visualized, then was a pathbreaking vision. This was to be done by 7 Integrated Investigation Forms, IIFs, which in itself, was the complete MRI of any criminal case, data thus collected would have been sufficient enough to take the policing to the next level. Had such a data base been created, however decentralized it might have been, even at the most local level, with the barest of networking, storage and compute, the Indian Police could have taken a giant technological leap once and for all.
Vision to reality challenge has been endemic to the Indian Police, more so in the field of technology. With formal training and forced practice missing, everyone has the right to decide, what technology means for the police and pace and methodology of its execution. The whole concept of centralized vision planning and making financial resources available, with decentralized implementation was brilliant on paper, but in hindsight the Indian Police was not ready for that. They wanted quick fix solutions and ease of functioning instantaneously, but that not to happen.
There were flashes in the technology pan, initiatives being taken individual police officers, who know some amount of technology and had the energy and the drive to bring down police drudgery and in the process get some accolades as well. All this as has been proven did not add up to anything great. Police does have tech savvy name even today. CIPA, Common Integrated Police Application, CIPA, again aiming at a humungous database on cases and hence on crime and criminals. The vision has always been a National Database which case care of idiosyncrasies of police functioning. Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems, CCTNS, initiated in 2009 was to transform Indian Police technologically and functionally.
The stated goal of CCTNS has the creation of National Database on Crime and Criminals, which could be in multifarious ways by the Police. An online system across the country, dynamic and real time would populate this database, inputs coming from all police stations. It made headway, but what is critical is integrity and honesty of data, readily available and needing no authentication. Courts have already ordered for FIRs to put on Police websites. The recent queries on data pertaining to Manipur cases by the Supreme Court and inability to provide it to the satisfaction of the court, shows serious crevices in the output of this grandiose project. A robust, dynamic and real time database would have saved the police from this situation. In addition, auto delete of video footages was something that should not have happened.
NATIONAL DATABASE OF CRIME AND CRIMINALS CAN BECOME NERVOUS SYSTEM OF THE INDIAN POLICE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.