Criminality and women

Whilst a majority of criminals are men, a significant number of women also engage in criminality

Whilst a majority of criminals are men, a significant number of women engage in criminality, with there being anecdotal reports that female criminality in Pakistan is rising. This presents the police with any number of problems. Firstly, there are not enough women police, neither are there enough women who are investigative officers able to interrogate female suspects. Male investigators are perennially open to accusations of sexual molestation or harassment of female detainees — many of these will be grounded in reality, but for others this could prove to be a powerful deterrent when it comes to interviewing a female suspect, who are often unwilling to communicate with a male interrogator. Male police often find themselves in difficulty if they try to arrest a woman as evidenced by an incident that occurred on McLeod Road, Lahore, recently. An ASI was trying to get a woman to court; she was resisting and quickly enlisted the help of bystanders. Similar reports are not uncommon.

The remedy is, on the face of it, simple — recruit more women into the police and train them as interrogators. In practice, not so simple. A job in the police force, even allowing for the fact that more women are coming into the workplace — is not high on the list for career-minded women. The police forces are not women-friendly employers and in many ways epitomise the patriarchy and misogyny that characterises wider society. The reality is that women are going to commit crime, everything from murder to the white-collar crimes that are increasingly common as IT culture spreads far and wide. Police forces, whether they like it or not — and they most certainly will not — are going to have to adapt to an evolving environment of criminality. Women are a part of that and simply being a woman is not an entitlement to being above the law. What is needed is an effective response to this change through induction of more women into police forces and the fostering of a culture that encourages their entry into this profession.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2015.

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