Neetika Vishwanath
Neetika Vishwanath is a DPhil Candidate in Criminology at Somerville College, University of Oxford. Her research examines how criminal law is interpreted and operationalised within India’s child sexual offences courts, focusing particularly on decision-making and discretion in bail, guilt determination, and sentencing. Drawing on her extensive experience in criminal justice research and litigation in India, her work uses ethnographic methods to explore how courtroom actors shape the everyday practice of criminal law.
- What is the title of your research, and what is it about?
My DPhil project is titled An Ethnography of Decision-Making and Discretion: Bail, Guilt Determination, and Sentencing in India’s Child Sexual Offences Courts. It examines how the “life of the law” takes shape through the interpretive practices of courtroom actors in Special Courts established under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act). Through an organisational analysis of criminal courts under the POCSO Act, I study how judges, prosecutors, defence and legal aid lawyers, clerks, and other court staff collectively shape decisions on bail, guilt, and sentencing. My methods include observation of courtroom proceedings, court corridors, and the offices of prosecutors and defence lawyers, alongside semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. My project begins from the premise that criminal law is not applied mechanically, but operationalised by actors whose knowledge, professional experience, institutional constraints, and normative commitments shape legal practice.
- Who is your supervisor?
My supervisors are Professor Carolyn Hoyle and Professor Lucia Zedner.
- How did you come up with your research topic?
My research topic grows out of nearly fifteen years of work on criminal justice in India, particularly sexual offences, the death penalty, and sentencing. I began my legal career representing women and children in cases of sexual and domestic violence. During my master’s degree in Women’s Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, I was introduced to qualitative research methods and conducted a prize-winning courtroom ethnography of adult rape trials in Lucknow, India. My LL.M. thesis at Harvard Law School examined judicial discretion in capital sentencing in child rape cases in India. Over the past decade, as a co-founder of The Square Circle Clinic at NALSAR University of Law, one of India’s leading centres for pro bono criminal defence litigation and criminal justice research, I have led an opinion study with former Supreme Court judges on the death penalty and empirical studies of criminal sentencing. My DPhil brings these strands together, drawing on the perspectives and insights I have developed through litigation, research, and sustained engagement with India’s criminal justice system.
- Why did you choose Oxford to undertake research in Criminal Law?
I chose Oxford because the Centre for Criminology and the wider Faculty of Law offer an exceptional intellectual community of scholars working across criminal law, criminology, and socio-legal studies. This is essential to the interdisciplinary nature of my project, which examines criminal law not only as doctrine but also as a social and institutional practice. My research in criminal law at Oxford would not have been possible without a scholarship from the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at Somerville College.
- How do you hope your research will contribute to law and society?
My DPhil research aims to demonstrate the value of studying criminal law within its social, political, institutional, and economic context rather than as an abstract body of rules. Rather than centring victims, as is common in research on sexual offences, my research foregrounds the court actors responsible for operationalising the law and, in doing so, seeks to offer a distinct perspective on an area that has received considerable scholarly attention. My thesis will also illuminate why Special Courts under the POCSO Act continue to function as they do, despite repeated reforms and ongoing concerns about the Act's implementation. Tracing discretion ethnographically in criminal courts will also offer a grounded account of when discretion in criminal law enables context-sensitive justice and when it becomes arbitrary, inconsistent, or difficult to justify.