Unit 4: Role of the Police to Control Crime
4.1 Goals, Objectives and Functions of Police Organization
The police are the state’s first-line agency of crime control and order maintenance. Goals: protection of life and property, preservation of peace, enforcement of law, and public service. Objectives (the operational ladder): crime prevention, crime detection and investigation, apprehension of offenders, evidence collection, victim assistance, traffic and public-order management. Functions (the classic triad): (i) law enforcement (the crime-response core); (ii) order maintenance (disputes, crowds, processions — the peace-keeping face without which the law’s face fails); (iii) service (lost children, emergencies, escorts — the welfare face that builds the legitimacy on which intelligence depends). The goals’ tension: crime control vs. due process (Unit 1.5) is the police’s daily constitutional test — Art 20’s arrest safeguards (grounds informed, counsel from arrest, production within 24 hours) and Art 22’s torture bar bind every function.
4.2 Development of Police Organization
The pre-modern world: kin and community enforcement (the kachahari, panchayat, badghar and mukhiya of local justice — Nepali Legal System, Semester 4), the duty to raise hue and cry, watchmen, and the state’s punitive garrisons. Nepal’s line: the Rana-era military-police amalgam, then the establishment of the modern Nepal Police after the 1951 political change, organised under the Police Act 2012 B.S. (1955/56) — recruitment, ranks, discipline, and the national command under the Ministry of Home Affairs; the Police Regulations and the departmental structure (the Inspector General of Police’s chain; the ranges and district commands). Later landmarks: specialised wings (CIB’s investigation bureaus, the Metropolitan Police in the valley, the women-and-children service desks), the Armed Police Force, 2058 B.S. as the paramilitary flank for armed insurgency and border security, and post-2015 the federal conversation (provincial police coordination under the Constitution’s policing arrangements). The comparative line:
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