[Edited for readability and continuity. Please consider this an
unauthorized summary. - Sanctuary Group]

Ms. Kiran Bedi, IPS 
====================

I would like to share my own experience as a police officer who
strongly believes in prevention. Police has a power to
correct. Throughout my career this power of crime prevention remained
in mind.  Prevention is easier than detection and cure. The crime
prevention motivation moved me more towards to community
involvement. This gave meaning to my police work - directly and
indirectly. It came naturally through community pressure. NGOs was
born out of the need expressed than for their own sake. 

How Children became Focus of my Work - Asli Policing: 

My training in 1972 did not emphasise partnerships or the community
but now it is much better. NGOs were considered competitors and
adversaries.  However, training has changed police views over time.

District divided into police stations. Station is broken into multiple
beats. Each beat has a constable/head constable. Know your beat
officers. NGOs have to know how work happens in the police
station. Work with the beat officer. If the area is a red light area,
then the beat officer can help if there are children at risk. Focus on
the beat officers - we never train them.  We train only the higher
level officers. If the beat officers are sensitized, then hafta
(bribe) is reduced, drugs and crime are reduced.

Beat officer + NGO = ideal policing. It will be people/community policing.

Go to the beat and make it a model beat. You cannot change all but you
can still know how the system works. During the work I noticed, there
are children who have drug/substance abuse. They are captured by the
local gangsters. They are controlled and used for theft. This is
important that we learn to prevent early.  These children need to be
carefully/delicately handled. If police is hostile, they can sabotage
your efforts. Construct a relationship.  Beat officers change. You
should get to know as soon as they are appointed. We added a beat box
- chair and table 6x6 space in a good location. Many women came to the
beat officer for help with the children - school attendance, drugs,
etc. I used to approve by the number of kids who knows the name of the
beat officer. That is indicative of the friendliness of the officer.
We used to organize a play day with children with athletics, games,
and freebies. This lets all the children know the beat officer. It
worked in Delhi in 25yrs back. That brought down dropout rates, and
increased the visits to the school by the beat officer. School also
started to pay attention upon realizing that somebody in the society
is concerned about the wellbeing of the child. Relationship with the
beat officer started to become more personal. Children used to call
the officer "uncle".

This goes towards my interest in crime prevention at the root level.

On another assignment, I had to address drug trafficking in slums of
North Delhi district that had several lakhs of people. Children were
consumers of the drugs. Mothers are involved. I called the women for
meeting with the help of local NGOs. There were no schools in vicinity
or other sources of income. I helped organizations from Chandi Chowk
setup up schools in the slums. Without schools, the children there are
involved in sexual activities, garbage picking, gambling etc. These
schools were called Gali (street) schools. If we have to change
children, we have to bring them closer to education. These schools
lasted for 2hrs per day on average. With literacy and discipline,
change begins. The child begins to open up. Ultimately, these schools
occupied a lane for 3hrs and local community memory educated upto
8-10std and trained teached. The begging dropped. So did drug
dealing. The timing was flexible - according to the children's daily
activities. The children started dropping garbage collection because
of self respect. He/she wants to study. In all there were 160 Galli
schools, called the Yamuna Pushti schools. 

The already addicted children were particularly at risk. There were no
child deaddiction centers. They pickup coins from bottom of Yamuna to
support their addiction. Navjyoti, an organization that I started, has
a deaddiction center. We work through eduction. Through classes, we
worked on the child and his/her mental health and parents. NGO, laws
and community needs to get together to address this problem. These
children are at tremendous risk.

The children at risk that I work with are within the prison system.
Children upto 4 years of age inside the prison living with the
mothers. They knew all about laws, knifing and murder. They didnt have
any access to medical services. They didnt have a medical card and
never visited a pediatrician. The prison did not arrange for any diet
or vaccines. They are a neglected lot.

We first separated the children and send them to school with the help
of NGOs. This schooling program is still going on. For the first time
in their life they visited a zoo. At the age of 4 the child when the
child has to leave the mother, we put them in residential school. We
had programs such as After Prison Education and Crime Home
Education. It saved 100s of children and the model has been adopted at
other prisons. Some of the children are in day schools.

My life is much richer with the involvement. It has direct crime
prevention value. They are tomorrow's criminals. They knew how to
commit crimes and love violence. The creche programs change them.  We
do not teach to hate the mother but the activity/crime. We would like
to keep the bond. Training of the mother inside the prison has helped
changed mothers.  The program is wholistic. Child development does not
happen in isolation. We have work with parents and neighbors.

Save the next victim! That is the philosophy.

Research finding have proven beyond doubt the importance of changing
environment. Law enforcement agencies can predict the crime risk 10
years from now given inputs such as crime propensisities, HIV, and
drugs. We can make projections on the vulnerability of the children
now and in future.

We can develop strategies and plan involvement of all police
departments. However, this is not the work of police alone. Children
need family, home, doctors etc - a complete environment.  Police
should work with NGOs to achieve this change. Child line is a network
along these line. Network all the NGOs - chain the NGOs with police.

School Ke Baad School: 

We find that when we mainstream the child (put them into schools) and
move them away from the road, children tend to run away. SKBS is about
preventing this running away by providing a secure learning
environment. The children do the homework at SKBS. There is
interesting activity such as music and rides. Each SKBS has about 50
children and one teacher. They read together and at the end of the
activity, they go home. They get extra guidance beyond the school. We
charge 10Rs as fees - nothing is free. We found that drop rate is
reduced. There is no loitering and good grades. We have 20 such
SKBS. We hope to start atleast 100 schools. Children need to nurtured
and girls have benifit the maximum because they constutte the largest
fraction of dropout. 


How can police help the social worker to prevent trafficking? 

The police officer first has to be knowledgeable. The checklist in the
souvenir (in the article written by Indrani Sinha) is a good
beginning. Different children have different uses. The police must
know how to help. They tend to be never read. You must also be
familiar.

Question: We do training/sensitization of the police. We are called
regularly to train officers at the SI level. We have many trainers but
not everyone is an excellent speaker. How do we make the police
officer interested in the matter? We find that 50% spend the time and
go away, 30% argue and 20% dont care. 

Answer: Training the disinterested is a challenge. We (police)
ourselves have no communication training. We emphasise more on law,
physical, and investigation. The police trainers are not even trained
trainers. The training methodology has to change. Case study
methods. Involve and engage them. You have look at the class and
devise methods. I tried vipassana and games. You have to find suitable
methods.


Question: Gali schools and SKBS. Education is the beginning of the
process.  Can you share what happens in the 3 hours? We find that
there is no way to bring them back after they visited drop in centers
(and dropped out of that as well).

Answer: We had home visits. Teacher relationships with the child
before and after school is important. During the 3 hours we practice
joyful learning. The teachers were trained by the best trainers
available and use all available materials. It was constructed as a
package. In case pf Gali schools, even the parents were also listening
because it was open street. Even illiterates were learning. We kept it
child centric and participatory, and evolved our techniques over time.

Question: When laws are updated, who is responsible for enactment?

Answer: Retraining is necessary but does not happen often. It is
usually upto the officers depending on the interest and leadership of
the department heads. Different officers have different strengths and
weakness. As NGOs you can organize courses.