Police and policing face many challenges in Pakistan. From retrograde legal framework to archaic criminal and business processes, all sorts of perceptions are associated with these challenges.

One of the key challenges is urban policing, which is not only nationally important, but has international significance as well. For example, the Introduction to the Handbook on Policing Urban Spaces published by the United Nations Office of Crime and Drugs in 2011.


Owing to the unique characteristics of cities, urban policing is a central governance challenge facing high income countries as well as low- and middle-income countries as diverse as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria,
Pakistan and South Africa.

Statistically, Pakistan records increase in urbanization: the 2017 Census has shown that 36.4% population is living in cities as compared to 32.5% in 1998. This is in line with global trends of increasing urbanization as over half of the world population now lives in cities. Rapid urbanization is a complex phenomenon as it affects society, aetiology of crime and response of state to the crime.

 Contextualized in this  backdrop, it is apt to examine how discourse on police reforms in Pakistan has looked at urban policing. In this regards, the following points merit consideration:


1.LITERATURE ON POLICE REFORMS

 
There are over three dozen official reports on police reforms in Pakistan. These reports constitute literature that must be treated as a point of departure on the subject. Urban policing did not get much attention in earlier reports. The 2019 Police Reforms Committee Report (PRC Report), however, was the first report to have expended special attention to urban policing. Its terms of reference, inter alia, required:
“Suggest revamping of urban policing by changing basic administrative structure, introducing better quality of command and control to ensure
quick decision making and rapid response to meet public order challenges as well as
quality of access to the citizens seeking justice.”
 Chapter 3 of the PRC Report analyzed this term of reference. It noted that  police organizations in Pakistan are predominantly rural in nature. The recommendations included re-organization of police in cities, functional specialization (operations, investigation, traffic, public relations, law and order and information technology wings), use of information technology and community participation in alternate dispute resolution etc. The Report also recommended establishment of urban police stations and proposed the following:

Each urban centre shall have one Police station for roughly 250,000 to 500,000 citizens called a Police Division. By this standard, Lahore shall have 20-25 Police Divisions instead of the current 88 Police stations. The area of three to four present Police stations with the right geographic contiguity shall be merged to form one Police Division.
” The recommendations contained in the report were sent to the Federation and the Provinces for consideration and implementation.