Gender-based violence and police reform: Evaluating a gender-based violence and sensitisation training programme

The project aims to study the role of policing quality in addressing gender-based violence (GBV). The goal is to assess and showcase the efficacy of a novel policing intervention programme in the Indian state of Bihar, which aims to shape police attitudes towards gender and performance towards GBV crimes. The intervention will provide GBV and gender-sensitisation training to officers with the approach to target the knowledge, attitude, and performance of police officers towards gender and the handling of GBV.

By making use of data collected through the officers’ survey, officers experimental data, police station, and other administrative data, the three policy-relevant questions that the research team aim to address are:

Hypothesis 1: Do female and male police officers’ attitudes toward gender, gender roles in policing, and GBV differ?

Hypothesis 2: Do female and male police officers’ attitudes toward gender, gender roles in policing, and GBV converge/change with a training programme?

Hypothesis 3: Does police performance towards gender and GBV crimes improve with differential training within organisational hierarchies? Does it matter if improved GBV and gender training is attributed to female or police officers in a bottom-up or top-down intervention?

Research shows that training programmes that engender notions of gender equality and women's rights have the potency to shift behaviour that translates into positive gender-based outcomes. The evidence, however, is based on experiments in developed countries (mostly US police forces) and is based on small samples. Therefore, the research project provides new evidence addressing both of these issues.