Working Paper: NBER ID: w31734
Authors: Sofia Amaral; Girija Borker; Nathan Fiala; Anjani Kumar; Nishith Prakash; Maria Micaela Sviatschi
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.
Keywords: sexual harassment; police patrols; urban India; randomized controlled trial; public spaces
JEL Codes: J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| visible police patrols (R48) | severe forms of street harassment (J81) |
| police visibility (J45) | incidence of harassment (J81) |
| officers' attitudes toward sexual harassment (J81) | incidence of harassment (J81) |
| police visibility + officers' attitudes toward sexual harassment (J81) | incidence of harassment (J81) |
| undercover officers' performance (K42) | harassment (J81) |
| officers' tolerance for mild harassment (J81) | willingness to punish offenders (K42) |
| stronger personal views against harassment (J81) | decline in all types of harassment (J81) |