The Law Enforcement and Policing Fellowship

Applications to the 2024-25 Fellowship are now open.

Overview

The Law Enforcement & Policing Fellowship is designed to identify and support serving and retired police officers, journalists, technology professionals, academicians, and lawyers committed to conducting fresh and original research aimed at upgrading India’s law enforcement system.

By fostering evidence-based research and development, the fellowship seeks to generate practical policy ideas and explore avenues for police reforms. It aims to create a unique, capacity-building and networked forum that provides actionable insights and knowledge that benefit Indian law enforcement.

The Fellowship

The Law Enforcement & Policing Fellowship offers opportunities for police officers, lawyers, technology professionals, journalists, and law graduates to work under the guidance of some of India’s foremost experts. The Fellows will work on a policy brief that will contribute to the discourse on policing in the information age.

To co-create ideas, there will be periodic symposiums where the Fellows will present their research and insights to a select audience of mentors and experts from the law enforcement community.

In addition, a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh will be awarded to the best policy briefs as determined by an independent jury. The duration of the fellowship is 10 months.

Indian Police Foundation (IPF) is a knowledge and institutional partner of the Law Enforcement and Policing Fellowship.

Who Should Apply

We invite applications from candidates from backgrounds including, but not limited to:

Serving & retired police officers across Indian states, officers in central police organisations, military police and other allied services

Civil servants/government officials, especially in state home departments
Public prosecutors and lawyers
Academics, especially in the domains of criminology, forensic sciences and criminal law
Crime analysts and journalists, especially crime reporters, and researchers

Prospective fellows must be Indian citizens, have at least an undergraduate degree and be proficient in English.

Fellowship Themes

For the fellowship, we encourage policy briefs on law enforcement and policing in these and allied domains:

Impact of technology on policing and crime prevention (on surveillance, crime reporting, forensics, detecting and tracing cybercrimes, hacking, financial crimes, and illegal trade among others); Identifying and building tools and techniques made available by the information age that can aid policing functions and Use of forensics in traditional and economic crimes.
Procedural & governance reforms to combat information age crimes and to ensure effective policing in radically networked societies.
Reforms in personnel management and training to match the information age problems; digitisation of records and databases; organisational change; reforms in police structures and resource allocation and overall upgradation of India’s law enforcement system; Digitalisation in police thinking & building a new generation of cyber cops and Building a knowledge ecosystem for police and crime analysts.
Building frameworks for evidence-based policing in India and identifying use cases; Non-policing interventions to improve law and order conditions.

Fellowship Process

Step 1: Submit Indication of Interest Form

Please enter your details in this Indication of Interest form.

Step 2: Call for Proposals

If you meet the Fellowship criteria, we will invite you to submit proposals (of not more than 1000 words) in areas relating to the themes mentioned above. The proposal should clearly state the current problems and shortcomings of knowledge and practices in policing in an Indian context and how the author(s) propose to approach the issue.

Along with the proposal, the author(s) is/are encouraged to send their past work in a related field or a writing sample on any topic, either published or unpublished, that is more than 1000 words.

Step 3: Interviews & Selection

After screening and evaluation, selected candidates will be invited to join the pioneer cohort of The Law Enforcement & Policing Fellowship.

Step 4: Timeline of the Fellowship

Applications to join the pioneer cohort of The Law Enforcement & Policing Fellowship are now open. We will announce the timeline of the Fellowship soon.