One of the major contributors to weak state capacity in India is administrative indiscipline. In particular there is the problem of government agencies not being able to conclude disciplinary proceedings against officials. Accordingly, services rules and administrative action becomes blunt disciplining tools. As I blogged here, in the context of corruption, it does not hurt to be corrupt, and the same applies to administrative indiscipline.
The Minneapolis murder of black American George Floyd by white policeman Derek Chauvin has triggered massive unrest in the US. It also highlighted the problems with concluding disciplinary actions against policemen in the US. Despite a long track record of misconduct, Chauvin has continued to remain in office,
In nearly two decades with the Minneapolis Police Department, Derek Chauvin faced at least 17 misconduct complaints, none of which derailed his career. Over the years, civilian review boards came and went, and a federal review recommended that the troubled department improve its system for flagging problematic officers... Critics say the department, despite its long history of accusations of abuse, never fully put in place federal recommendations to overhaul the way in which it tracks complaints and punishes officers — with just a handful over the years facing termination or severe punishment. Even as outrage has mounted over deaths at the hands of the police, it remains notoriously difficult in the United States to hold officers accountable, in part because of the political clout of police unions, the reluctance of investigators, prosecutors and juries to second-guess an officer’s split-second decision and the wide latitude the law gives police officers to use force. Police departments themselves have often resisted civilian review or dragged their feet when it comes to overhauling officer disciplinary practices.
And even change-oriented police chiefs in cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia — which over the last few years have been the sites of high-profile deaths of black men by white officers — have struggled to punish or remove bad actors. The challenge has played out against and reinforced racial divisions in America, with largely white police forces accused of bias and brutality in black, Latino and other minority communities. Mr. Floyd’s death came just weeks after Ahmaud Arbery, a black man in southeast Georgia, was pursued by three white men and killed, and after Breonna Taylor, a black woman, was fatally shot by the police in Kentucky.
Disciplinary proceedings generally end in favour of the charged officials,
The St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed five years’ worth of such appeals and found that between 2014 and 2019, Minnesota arbitrators — a group that hears a range of public service complaints — ruled in favor of terminated law enforcement and correction officers 46 percent of the time, reinstating them. In three terminations involving law enforcement officers that were reviewed this year, two were overturned. Dave Bicking, a board member of Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Twin Cities advocacy group, said many disciplinary actions are overturned because they are compared to previous cases, making it hard for departments to reverse a history of leniency or respond to changing community expectations. “Because the department has never disciplined anybody, for anything, when they try to do it now, it’s considered arbitrary and capricious,” he said...
In 2012, the civilian board in Minneapolis was replaced by an agency called the Office of Police Conduct Review. Since then, more than 2,600 misconduct complaints have been filed by members of the public, but only 12 have resulted in an officer being disciplined, Mr. Bicking said. The most severe censure has been a 40-hour suspension, he said.
These numbers would not be out of place in India.
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