Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and Police Patrols: Experimental Evidence from Urban India

92 Pages Posted: 3 Oct 2023 Last revised: 17 Mar 2024

See all articles by Sofia Amaral

Sofia Amaral

World Bank; South Asia Gender Innovation Lab

Girija Borker

World Bank

Nathan Fiala

University of Connecticut

Anjani Kumar

Indian Police Service (IPS)

Nishith Prakash

Northeastern University; Institute for the Study of Labor

Maria Micaela Sviatschi

Princeton University

Date Written: September 2023

Abstract

We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an innovative police patrol program on sexual harassment in public spaces in Hyderabad, India. In collaboration with the Hyderabad City Police, we randomized both exposure to police patrols and the visibility of officers by deploying both uniformed and undercover personnel to hotspots. We implemented a novel, high-frequency observation exercise to measure sexual harassment at 350 hotspots, where enumerators took note of all observed instances of sexual harassment and women’s responses in real time. We find that although police patrols had no impact on overall street harassment, the visible policing patrols reduced severe forms of harassment (forceful touching, intimidation) by 27 percent and reduced the likelihood of women leaving the hotspot due to sexual harassment. We uncovered the underlying mechanisms and found that both police visibility and officers’attitudes oward sexual harassment are key to understanding its incidence. While the performance of undercover officers was similar to that of uniformed officers, harassment did not decrease when undercover officers were on patrol. This suggests that the visibility of police officers is critical in deterring perpetrators. Additionally, using lab experiments we find that, on average, police officers were more tolerant of mild street harassment and less inclined to punish offenders in such cases. Correspondingly, we observed in uniformed hotspots a decline in all types of harassment only when assigned officers held stronger personal views on harassment.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Suggested Citation

Amaral, Sofia and Borker, Girija and Fiala, Nathan and Kumar, Anjani and Prakash, Nishith and Sviatschi, Maria Micaela, Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and Police Patrols: Experimental Evidence from Urban India (September 2023). NBER Working Paper No. w31734, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4589696

Sofia Amaral (Contact Author)

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

South Asia Gender Innovation Lab

Girija Borker

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

Nathan Fiala

University of Connecticut ( email )

Storrs, CT 06269-1063
United States

Anjani Kumar

Indian Police Service (IPS) ( email )

Rajasthan
India

Nishith Prakash

Northeastern University ( email )

220 B RP
Boston, MA 02115
United States

Institute for the Study of Labor ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Maria Micaela Sviatschi

Princeton University ( email )

22 Chambers Street
Princeton, NJ 08544-0708
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
4
Abstract Views
297
PlumX Metrics