ATM booths to improve law and order

We live in a society where corruption, robbing, stealing and mugging are increasing day by day. These problems often make the headlines in the dailies in our country. We have become almost accustomed to seeing news that somebody has been stabbed to death by muggers.

The law-enforcement agencies are entrusted with the responsibility to protect ordinary citizens from all of these. Ironically, the law and order enforcing authorities are often incentivised to remain silent, and they are also negligent in carrying out their duties properly. We need a better law and order enforcement to curb social problems. But the problem with this appeal is that it often regards law and order system as a totally exogenous variable that doesn't depend on any other variables except on some institutional factors. That means improvement of law and order is totally dependent on the characteristic institutional factors such as strong commitment of law enforcing bodies. There is no problem with this argument as long as the law and order system is not compromised by widespread corruption. But the law and order system here is often subject to corruption and domination of unwanted political interference. For this reason, we will not say that the strong commitment to justice is the only way to ensure better law and order enforcement. Instead of taking law and order enforcement as given, we just treat it as an endogenous variable that adjusts and reacts with respect to changes to some other variables that are not institutional in nature.  One of the significant variables on which better law and order enforcement can depend on is the number of Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) booths.
ATM BOOTHS AND LAW AND ORDER ENFORCEMNET: It may seem quite surprising that there is a relationship between law and order enforcement and the number of ATM booths. To make sense of this relationship, we can start as follows.
There is no ATM booths. People go directly to banks to make daily transactions such as withdrawing money. They also carry cash and no cards to perform transactions. We assume that risk of carrying cash and cards are not same. People feel more insecure when they carry hard cash than when they carry cards because cards have some security protection such as unique personal pin number.
Person X is goes to a bank to withdraw some money to perform some transactions. While returning from the bank after withdrawing money, he has been chased by some robbers and his money is robbed on the way. He informs this incident to some people and eventually seeks police help hoping that his money will be recovered. The police note down this incident and assure him that they will try to find out the culprits immediately. But somehow police have been unable to detect the robbers and X's money is completely lost. This event has gone unnoticed by news reporters and doesn't come to the notice of the general people. So, the information about robbing is spread only among the police, the victim and some other people whom the victim told the story and who were in the place where he was robbed.


There are thousands like X whose stories never make the headline in newspapers. But newspapers, given the resource constraint, can't cover all the events and it is totally impossible to provide narratives of each and every single case of robbery, stealing, and mugging. So, some events make newspaper headlines and some never appear and get lost between the police and the victim. Moreover, the police in our country are not that much efficient and committed to their service. They often get engaged into corruption. So, the justice for X hangs in suspension and so is true for millions.
Now, assume X doesn't carry cash and holds different cards to perform transactions.

He doesn't go to bank to withdraw money rather goes to a nearby ATM booth. Assume that near the ATM booth or inside the ATM booth he is met by a robber and become a victim of robbery. This time his story of being robbed has not only been reported by newspapers but also has drawn the notice of the bank which is offering him banking service. So, the information about the robbery is not only spread between X and the police but also between X and the bank.
Earlier, the bank was quite indifferent about information that X is robbed while returning from the bank after withdrawing money. But this time the bank is not indifferent about the security of its customer at ATM booths. Moreover, providing security doesn't lie with the bank. The law and order enforcing agencies must provide it. So, what can the bank do for X? The bank will put pressure on the law and order enforcing agencies.
The reason is when people in general don't carry any cash and become a victim of robbery and mugging, the frequency at which news of such robbery will be covered by news media and the amount of notice it will get will be much more higher than when people carry cash and become victims of robbery. The pressure on the law and order enforcing agency will not only come from  victims but also from businesses and banks. Robbery at ATM booths or when people carry cards to perform transactions affects the interest not only of the person robbed but also of businesses and banks.
For this reason, as the number of ATM booths increases, the law and order enforcement improves and vice versa. Improvement of the law and order enforcement implies reduction in the number of robbery cases. On the other hand, as people start using different banks cards such as debit card and credit cards, the number of cases of card forgery and robbery increases. These two combined will determine an equilibrium number of cases of forgery and robbery. That means:
In the above figure, number of ATM booths (NATM) and the number of robbing cases (Rb) are measured respectively on the horizontal and the vertical axes. The downward sloping Rb1line shows that as NATM increases, Rb1 decreases implying that law and order system improves as the number of ATM booths increases and vice-versa. On the other hand, the upward sloping line Rb2 shows that as the NATM increases, the number of cases of robbery increases as people use more and more ATM booths.

The point of intersection of two lines determines the equilibrium number of ATM booths at which actual and potential number of cases of robbery are equal. The potential number is determined by the use of ATM booths or by the upward sloping line, and the actual number is determined by the efficiency of the law and order enforcement or by the downward sloping line Rb1.  
When the number of ATM booths is N1, the difference between thr actual and potential cases of robbery is very high implying inefficiency of the law and order system. At N2 number of ATM booths potential number of cases is greater than the actual number of cases and this is not possible since potential number can't exceed the actual number in this case. We show this as follows:


The figure II shows that upward sloping Rb2 curve asymptotically approaches the equilibrium number of robbery cases and that downward sloping Rb1 curve also asymptotically approaches the equilibrium number of robbery cases.
The reason for their asymptotic behaviour is that  as the number of ATM booths increases, the number of robbery cases increases but it will not increase for every increase in ATM booth. The reason is that downward sloping curve Rb1imposes constraint on the upward sloping curve. The downward sloping curve implies the efficiency of the law and order enforcement. As it becomes more and more efficient, the potential number of cases will increase but at a decreasing rate and approach the equilibrium number of robbery cases.
CONCLUSION: The main purpose of the above analysis is to show how the treatment of the law and order enforcement as an endogenous variable can make a huge impact on law and order enforcement in our society. A single ATM booth can have significant effect on the law and order system in a society; it can ensure better and efficient enforcement of law and order.
We often see that people are robbed of while carrying hard cash and they hardly get any significant protection both before and after robbery. The law and order enforcement authorities in our country is circumscribed by corruption, bribe taking and political manipulations.
The so-called political and social commitments also don't help to ensure strict enforcement of law and order. So, it is better that we take law and order system as a dependent variable and specify the independent variables on the right hand side. Then we measure the changes in law and order enforcement with respect to changes in the right hand side variables. One of the right hand side variables, which can have strong impact on the law and order enforcement, is the number of ATM booths.
We can use variety of instruments to build a strict law and order enforcement system and increasing the number of ATM booths is one of them. The implication is that as the number of ATM booths will increase over time, the number of robbery cases will decrease implying that ATM booths ensure better law and order enforcement.
The contributor writes from the University
of Denver, USA.
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