§ Mr. GEORGE ROBERTSasked the Under-Secretary for India whether the Secretary of State is aware that Lord Curzon's Police Commission reported in 1904 that the station-house police officer naturally concluded that his promotion depended upon his obtaining a high ratio of convictions and a low ratio of crime, and that he believed that much less attention was given to the methods of his work than to the results, and that but little inquiry would be made regarding the means provided the ends were satisfactory, and that in view of the evils flowing from the wide prevalence of these opinions among the subordinate police, it was a matter of imperative urgency that everything possible should be done to remove all justification for so damaging a belief; and whether he could state what steps had been taken by the Government of India or the Secretary of State to give effect to the above recommendation?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe Secretary of State is aware that the Commission reported in these terms. Their recommendations in the matter were: (1) that police work should be judged not by statistical results, but upon the facts elicited by inquiries based on statistics; (2) that inspections of police stations should be confined to criticism of the actual work done in relation to crime; (3) that in the reports of such inspections no statistics of crime should be given; (4) that a statement in use in one province, showing the percentage of convictions to persons arrested and prosecuted and a figure of merit, based on these percentages, for each district, should be abolished. In 1905 the Government of India accepted all of these recommendations, and my hon. Friend may take it that police work in India is no longer judged by statistical results.