Monitoring via the Courts: Judicial Oversight and Police Violence in India

Can the creation of court-mandated accountability institutions improve human rights? In this article, we investigate the extent to which court-ordered accountability institutions decrease government repression in the form of police violence. We argue that the creation of regional bodies to which citizens report allegations of police abuse provides “fire-alarm” oversight by which police officers can be monitored for abuses of power. To test the implications of our theory, we take advantage of variance in the implementation of Prakash Singh and Others v. Union of India and Others, a 2006 judgment by the Supreme Court of India requiring states and districts to establish local Police Complaints Authorities (PCAs). Using a difference-in-difference design, we show the implementation of state PCAs to be associated with statistically and substantively significant decreases in human rights violations by Indian police officers.