Understanding the Crime Trend in India in View of Social and Institutional Changes: A Time Series Analyses based Explanation

• In Event: Special Crimes and Ethics of Investigation in India

Abstract

Crime known to the police in India shows a continuous decrease for a few decades following the global phenomenon of declining crime trend. The declining trend in India, however, is not very consistent across different crime categories and regions. For example, rape shows an increase, while other categories of serious crime show a decrease. Moreover, homicide shows a gradual decrease, while other serious crimes such as robbery and burglary show a sharp decrease. Similarly, different crime rates show substantive difference between different states. The overall declining trend of crime, and region and crime categories based discrepancies with regards to crime trend calls for an explanation. The study, therefore, intends using socio-economic, institutional, and police productivity, related with reporting and recording of crime, factors to provide explanation for inconsistent declining crime trend in India. Auto-regressive time series models with relevant predictor variables will be estimated to explain the trend. The study has some methodological limitations. The crime data series and other predictor variables used in the study have limited observations

Authors

• Sami Ansari, Salem State University

• Arvind Verma, Indiana University, Bloomington