Prof. Martin Killias, criminologist from University of Zurich, observed that the reduction in the number of firearm related murders in India — from 20 to seven per cent — is a worldwide phenomenon.

The professor was delivering a lecture on “Experimental Research in Criminology and Criminal Justice” at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics. Prof. Killias said, “In 2004, firearm related murder rate was 20 percent and in 2009, it decreased to 7 per cent. This particular change is thought provoking and European countries have a lot to learn from India.”

However, he said that India needs to conduct a scientific study of crime. So far, India doesn’t have any dedicated institutes to study and research criminology.

“Given the scarcity of resources and human costs involved in the actions of the criminal justice system, evaluation of interventions becomes more and more of a standard practice in many countries. In this context, randomised controlled trials play an increasingly prominent role,” he added.

By randomly assigning subjects to different conditions, the effects of interventions can clearly be assessed and causal interpretations become possible. This procedure is illustrated through two experiments, namely; comparing community service to custodial sanctions as well as to electronic monitoring.

The high internal validity of randomised controlled trials leads to the question, whether or not the results can be generalised to other countries or other context.

In order to assess these issues (of external validity), international networks like Cochrane Collabor-ation in medicine and the Campbell Collaboration in the field of social sciences, are trying to take stock of available evidence from a global perspective.

The ambition is to achieve “evidence based” knowledge and to make it universally available though the internet, he said.