Pakistan, May 7 -- The main purpose of policing is to preserve the law and order in a society. To this end, prevention of crime operates at a deeper level in order to uphold societal order. However, preventive measures can be costly or considered disproportionate, so it is of utmost importance to lay bare the effectiveness and efficiency of preventive policing in any society.

Preventive policing has its roots in colonial times. The colonialists, in order to force their control over the public, who they thought were the criminals, brought many pieces of legislation that dealt with preventive policing. The earliest legislation came right after the war of independence, characterized as rebellion by the British, in 1857 - the era of reconstr...