Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

In order to function and develop normally a country needs security, protection of indi vidual rights and rule of law. Russian law enforcement agencies, since the early nineties, have been consistently, and understandably, criticized for poor performance in meeting these objectives. While the state appears to make efforts to reform and improve its legal system, the law enforcement agencies continue to fall short of their mandate. The governments efforts over recent years to improve police the key components of the law enforcement system affecting the everyday lives of its citizens have so far failed to bring about any substantial change in the policies and practices of this institution. Redistri bution of power and mandates within the Ministry of Interior, delegation of certain functions to other bodies, such as the Federal Service for Drug Control, and attempts to set up internal controls in the form of an Internal Investigations Department have produced little positive impact on individual rights protection. The goals, methods and practices of the Russian po lice have not changed, and currently the police force is unable to offer the Russian public any guarantees of personal security and protection of property. The Russian police in its current form is obsolete and unable to meet the development needs of the state and society. The fact that there has been no tangible success in the modernization of the Russian law enforcement system is largely due to the lack of a comprehensive view of existing problems.

CRISIS OF PUBLIC CONFIDENCE

Maybe the most obvious indication of the police inability to meet the needs of the Rus sian public is seen in the extremely low public confidence. The findings of a large scale survey undertaken by the Demos Center and its partner NGOs in eight Russian cities1 reveal that 48% of the population hold a negative view of police performance, while another 12% admit that poor police performance is due to a number of objective reasons.2 This lack of confidence means, in fact, that police have lost their legitimacy according to the Russian public. We believe that the primary reason for this loss of legitimacy is due to the arbitrary work practices which have become an integral part of the policing in Russia. By arbitrary, we mean any form of unfounded and unlawful restriction of peoples rights and liberties, ranging from the right to protection of life, personal integrity, property, etc. to the right to be free of torture and ill treatment, the right to privacy, etc. Members of the public do not necessarily invoke specific rights, but they express their concern by saying that an individual complaining to the police often encounters inaction,
1 2

Hereinafter the large scale survey.

The Levada Analytical Center that regularly undertake national surveys focused on specific issues have also found that the proportion of citizens who do not trust the police has not changed over the past 10 years and remains at 40%. The Public Opinion Foundation, VTSIOM and ROMIR centers independently report similar findings.

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

disregard of their complaint, or even brutality. Citizens rightly assume that the needs of ordi nary members of the public are not a priority for police. The law enforcement agencies fail to perform their main function by leaving citizens unprotected in the face of crime, ranging from theft or bullying, to terrorist attacks. (Notably, a year after the Beslan school hostage taking crisis, 65% of Russians believe that authorities are unable to protect them from terrorist attacks,3 while growing crime rates come fifth on the list of peoples major concerns.4) The police themselves are less than enthusiastic about their own performance. The chief of a district police office participating in an expert survey undertaken by the Demos Center partners network,5 described the police force as a cheap scarecrow un able to scare any criminals. Public dissatisfaction with the way law enforcement agencies enforce law and or der further aggravates the overall anger and discontent caused by corruption, violence and other abuse associated with police operation. Instead of serving as a model of law abiding citizens, as the public wants them to be, the police extort bribes. Instead of working to ensure security, Russian police are a major threat to the physical integrity of citizens. Massive acts of violence, such as the sweep operation in Blagoveschenks, Bashkortostan,6 are not very common, but individual minor incidents of abuse are preva lent. It is not surprising that about one half of the Russian public consider law enforce ment agencies, including the police, as corrupt,7 and about the same proportion of people fear police violence.8

A DYSFUNCTIONAL FORCE: CAUSES OF ABUSE

Human rights defenders have documented widespread police abuse, such as torture and ill treatment, falsified criminal prosecutions, and other human rights violations. The public, while being primarily concerned with poor police performance, are also in constant fear of unwarranted violence by the Interior Ministry officers. Both sets of problems (poor perform ance and extreme human rights violations) are parts of the general definition of arbitrary quoted above. The main cause of these phenomena is the current situation of the Russian police a situation which makes this public institution fundamentally dysfunctional. It is obvious that police dysfunction cannot be explained merely by the lack of dili gence, mistakes or infringements committed by certain police officers. The fact that abu sive practices, ranging from refusal to accept an individual complaint of a cell phone theft to indiscriminate use of violence during security operations, are so common and sustain able suggests serious systemic problems in the entire Russian police force.
3 4 5

See http://www.wciom.ru/?pt=45&article=1650 See http://www.levada.ru/press/2005081501.html

The expert survey was undertaken in 10 Russian regions and focused on active members of the law enforcement (police, prosecutors, the Ministry of Interior internal investigations department, including both high ranking officials and field forces), researchers and teachers of the Ministry of Interior training institutions, judges, former members of the law enforcement, and officers convicted for service related crimes. Hereinafter the expert survey.
6 See the Moscow Helsinki Group website for a detailed account of events in Blagoveschenks: http://www.mhg.ru/publications/505AFAE 7 8

See http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/societas/right/pravoohranitelne_organ/tb020405 See http://bd.fom.ru/map/projects/dominant/dom0510/domt0511_4

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

The Russian law enforcement system suffers from a comprehensive set of prob lems, which can be boiled down to three major interrelated points: the lack of material resources, the lack of trained and motivated personnel, and the lack of performance management structures capable of meeting the current realities faced by the Russian police force.

Material resources and supplies

The lack of material and financial resources is the first problem that police officers mention in their responses, and we cannot but agree with them. In early and mid nine ties the Russian police forces financial situation was at its worse. While it has gotten somewhat better since, district police offices, which are the core component of the sys tem, responsible for carrying out everyday police tasks remain severely underresourced and are lacking in even basic supplies. Responding to the survey questions, police officers mentioned shortages of office supplies and paper, basic office equipment, furniture, pet rol and spare parts for patrol cars. The situation may be caused by underfunding, by un equal distribution of the funding available, or by both jointly. Some of the police officers surveyed even assumed that the allocated funds were simply misappropriated before they had a chance of reaching field units. Whatever the causes of underrresourcing, it affects everyday police operations in an extremely negative way. Instead of focusing their efforts on fighting crime and on other relevant objec tives, heads of police offices as well as rank and file members of the police force, have to spend their time and efforts trying to meet the services basic needs. For ex ample, it has become a common practice in police units to pool together officers personal money to buy furniture or equipment. We did not have a computer before, we have just bought one we clubbed together in the unit. It is no use waiting for our superiors to buy us one. 9 You see, today we have again clubbed together in the unit and will buy some furniture.10 Of course, the lack of material resources and supplies affects the police units per formance and ability to control and prevent crime. We should also bear in mind that rank and file police contribute parts of their own meager salaries to the informal funds they use to equip their offices. Confronted by the lack of even minimal material facilities needed for service, heads of police offices as well as rank and file personnel sometimes seek support from sources which undermine their public image and perceived independence. For example an of ficer of police patrol unit in Tver revealed in an interview that his colleagues and himself sometimes boldly enter a gas station asking them to fill up our patrol car [for free].11 A district police chief in the Komi Republic explained that to resource his force he has to ask local businesses for support. Some of them are normal [law abiding] businesses, and some are not, but I have to deal with every one of them. Such as Zhilcomkhos [Housing and Utilities Company] to which I owe 60 thousand [rubles]. I have to go around begging for money, and hear people saying that I make deals with mafia. But how can I survive otherwise? Then you should give me sufficient funding, so I do not have to beg. On the

From an interview with a police detective, Altai Krai. From an interview with a police detective, The Republic of Tatarstan. From an interview with a patrol officer, Tver Oblast.

10 11

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

one hand, I am supposed to make sure that my unit functions normally, but on the other hand, I am not getting any [resources], so I have to make contacts [with businesses].12 Certainly, this situation, in and of itself, breeds corruption and provokes police abuse.

Personnel and training

Another key problem affecting law enforcement is that of personnel competence and motivation. With the meager salary they can offer, Police Human Resources departments are limited in their ability to recruit skilled, honest and intelligent people in the force. While police salaries are comparable to those in other sectors, they do not compensate for the work intensity and risks associated with the service. Moreover, the recent monetization of benefits reform13, which replaced various entitlements (such as free public transportation) with monetary compensations negatively affected police officers, as the money offered was insufficient to cover the lost privileges. A police chief in the Komi Republic interviewed for the expert survey described the personnel situation as follows: There is a Timber Complex nearby. They [police offic ers] can get a low level job there and still earn big money. It is absurd, we placed job offers inviting people to join the police force, and anyone who was not seriously ill could easily pass the selection board. The only requirement was that they should have completed their general education. As a result, some people got through who have no business serving in the police force. The wage level, again, is an issue. We seek people, rather than select.14 Skilled graduates of police training institutions are not too keen on taking jobs with the force. The survey found that top reasons for joining the police were as follows: it is extremely easy to get a job; the applicant has failed to find any better employment; police service is a family tradition. Until recently, a common motivation for joining the police was avoidance of the military draft, but since the change of conscription regulations it is no longer the case. In any event, only a tiny minority of police officers have joined the force driven by a conscious choice and commitment. As a result, many police officers do not really belong in the force; their awareness of their public mandate and their personal motivation for service are extremely low. Work under severe material constraints and poor pay, which many surveyed officers describe as humiliating, are not conductive to a responsible and professional ap proach to their duty. It is not surprising that many police units are affected by high personnel turnover. Even those officers who are committed to begin with, ultimately leave the service for more predictable work hours, higher pay, professional independence and better social status. The surveyed police officers have said that in rank and file units personnel turno ver period is about two years, and those officers who stay with the force avoid working too hard in a job that is not adequately resourced by the state or valued by the public. Some of those who stay with the service choose to get some personal advantage from the power given to them. Bribery and corruption are systemic features of the law enforce ment in Russia. They are key reasons for the lack of public confidence, but at the same

12 13 14

From an interview with the chief of a district police department, The Komi Republic. Federal Law No 122. From an interview with the chief of a police office, The Komi Republic.

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

time, as far as rank and file police are concerned, bribes are virtually unavoidable, and it would be fair to say that police operation in Russia is always adjusted for corruption. Problems with human resources are aggravated by the current system of training, which fails to educate and motivate future officers to maintain high professional stand ards, and even fails to give them the knowledge and skills they need. The surveyed officers have said that the entire system of training is outdated, formalistic, and inadequate in terms of providing legal knowledge and practical skills. Quoting a police woman, My assessment of the training would be passable, but poor. I have worked for a training center where rank and file police officers were trained. I would say that the difference between any man on the street and a police officer with powers to enforce the law and with a mandate to defend our rights and interests is a three months training course, half of which is marching and shooting drills. It is ridiculous. 15 A young officer taking a job with a police unit will make up for the lack of knowledge and skills by learning from those higher in the rank and longer in the service. Such mentoring is a system of training, education and control affected by personality related factors. According to police officers whose service began back in Soviet times, they ben efited from the support and mentoring offered by senior colleagues, who contributed to their knowledge and skills and motivated their professional growth. Today, however, mentoring, while being the most important part of police training, perpetuates ineffec tive service patterns and often not so legal methods of survival in hard circumstances faced by the service, and contributes to sustainability of abusive practices, including corruption and violence. The lack of professional skills is not the only problem; police, prosecutors and judges all admit that rank and file officers are chronically overworked. The officers themselves have reported that intensive regime and overtime work are common. They have also noted that a major factor contributing to their workload is the overly complicated and bureaucratic system of documentation. The excessive workload is combined with the lack of technical assistants and material resources. Ultimately, people in charge of fighting crime operate at the limits of their capacity.16 Ironically, it has been officially reported that the Ministry of Interior force is ad equately staffed.17 Unfortunately, the actual number of police in the country is not pub lished. By some expert estimates, it reaches approximately 1.5 million and should de crease, rather than increase.18 This apparent paradox may be explained by the current system of staffing, with an excessive number of administrative personnel and a shortage of positions working in the community, such as investigators, patrol officers, and others.19

15 16

From an interview with a former police officer, Sverdlovsk Oblast. From an interview with a police detective, Tver Oblast.

17 Read the interview given by Russian Deputy Minister of Interior Eugeny Solovyev to The Shield and Sword Newspaper http://www.mvdinform.ru/index.php?docid=3048 18

Member of the Federal Duma Committee on Security, retired FSB Colonel Gennady Gudkov

http://www.polit.ru/news/2004/02/06/gudkov_print.html
19 It is possible that there is an excessive number of administrative personnel and a shortage of positions working in the community, such as investigators, patrol officers, and others. In addition, staff shortages are more likely to affect the field forces, because these positions are less attractive.

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Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

Management and Reporting

The current management system is another problem area for Russian law enforce ment. The established systems of setting targets, reporting and performance evaluation negatively affect police units and individual officers. Article 1 of the Federal Law on Police20 states that police force in the Russian Federation is a system of public bodies with a mandate to protect life, health, human rights and civil liberties, property, and interests of the public and the state from criminal and other unlawful attempts. However, any hope of reaching these objectives is lost at the stage of setting perform ance targets for police units in particular, due to excessively centralized command and man agement systems unsuitable for such a vast federal country like Russia. The overall goal of fighting crime is translated into specific objectives at the highest central level and then distrib uted to subordinate units across the country. This is how police officers describe the practice: Everything is cascaded from the top, like a snowball. That is, they decide in the Ministry, in Moscow, and cascade their decisions down the line. They set objectives, they set targets...21 The centralized system of setting targets without any feedback from the regions and without any possibility of adjustment prevents any region specific or community specific planning. As a result, the police force in a specific region or district, rather than address the actual prob lems of the local community, have to put their efforts into just another nation wide campaign, which may or may not be relevant to their circumstances. As a result, a neighborhood police officer in Tver, instead of performing his duty in the community, keeps guard at the Tver Central Police Station Checkpoint to ensure security of the nation wide anti terrorist operation.22 Extreme centralization of police command structure does not allow for any flexibil ity in evaluating the performance of police units and individual officers, and excludes any qualitative parameters from such evaluation. As a result, police performance targets are excessively formalized. While the Interior Ministry ostensibly recognized the infamous crime detection rate indicator as detrimental to police performance and issued, in 2002, Order No 115023 estab lished new police performance evaluation criteria, abandoning the 100% detection rate requirement, adding many new parameters and a systematic approach to evaluating police performance. However, the introduction of a new performance evaluation framework did little to eradicate the faulty practice of striving at good performance indicators. The problem is that the new evaluation framework, just like the old ones, is based mostly on quantitative parameters. An attempt to introduce a qualitative parameter, such as public opinion, failed because no method or procedure of measuring public opinion was available. The detection rate indicator was replaced by the dynamics of indicators, meaning that performance is evaluated by whether indicators have increased or decreased as compared to the previous period. It means, for example, that from one reporting period to another, police units working with juveniles are expected to forward more requests to courts to de prive dysfunctional parents of their parental rights, and place more teenagers in temporary

20 21 22

Federal Law No 10 26 1 of 18 April 1991. From an interview with a former police officer, The Republic of Adygeya. From an interview with a police detective, Tver Oblast.

23 The Ministry of Interior Order No 1150 on the Introduction of new performance evaluation systems in the Ministry of Interior agencies, certain criminal police and public security police units, and investigative bodies of 23 November 2002.

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

11

holding centers. Neighborhood police officers are expected to submit more reports of ad ministrative offences, while organized crime units should investigate more terrorist crimes, and drug control units must detect more drug related crimes and confiscate more drugs. Each police officer, regardless of rank, is bound by the requirement to demonstrate higher performance indicators from year to year. Indicators are a major determining factor in promotion, bonus and similar decisions. Reporting is the central event in the life of a police officer. Their pursuit of positive dynamics is, in fact, no better than striving for high de tection rates. An ex policeman who has recently left the force offered the following com ment: Well, if, for example, your indicator is minus 0.05%, they [the superiors] will skin you. So [police] will do whatever to show positive dynamics, even if the difference is one hundredth of one percent.24 In reality, rank and file police units cannot demonstrate the required performance indi cators without cheating. Firstly, the performance evaluation system does not take into account the real dynamics of crime; moreover, it disregards completely the fact that good policing should lead to a decrease of crime, i.e. to a drop in related indicators. On the contrary, a police man who has done a good job preventing petty crime risks being punished in the next reporting period, because the number of reported administrative offences will naturally decrease. Secondly, the requirements and targets are too high for most police units, because, as noted above, they are underresourced, their personnel lack professional skills and suf fer from overwork, and so field police units cheat to meet the targets. Because they must avoid a drop in detection rates, police refuse to accept complaints where they see the case as having no prospects from the reporting perspective. In addition, police officers do whatever they can to reduce the time spent on each case, complaint, or victim. To make sure their statistics are good, police avoid investigating serious and compli cated crimes; instead, they focus on minor offences and sometimes they even falsify cases. A police officer from the economic crime unit said in an interview, with a fair degree of self irony, that he had been trying for many months to investigate a serious economic crime, but each time the reporting period comes, he has to focus on other, minor cases to make sure his statistics are good and his superiors are happy. He said, There is a lot of evidence, the damage is high, but [the investigation] will take time. But there are all signs of crime there. I was digging into it all of the past month. At the end of the month, however, what you need is detection rates, the points. So you get down to catching small fry, such as bus drivers who fail to give out tickets [when they receive the fare from passen gers]. You deal with little things, while serious crimes lose priority.25 Protecting their statistics, police often refuse to take complaints from victims, and sometimes manipulate figures. A neighborhood police officer in Barnaul said, Some times you do funny things, like, when your statistics are good, you withhold some of your detected cases until the next reporting period, so that the statistics are not so good, be cause if they are good you may have problems trying to improve them in the future.26 The focus on statistics as opposed to fighting crime further undermines police per formance and devaluates their professional skills. Most police officers surveyed agree that officers capable of showing good statistics have the highest value this is what the system

24 25 26

From an interview with a former police officer, The Republic of Adygeya. From an interview with a police detective, The Republic of Tatarstan. From an interview with a neighborhood police officer, Altai Krai.

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Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

requires. An officer who meets the needs of the system can count on frequent raises, and benefit from the superiors tolerance of his dishonesty and digressions from law. By provid ing timely and positive reporting, a police officer ensures that his superiors will support him and turn a blind eye on abuse, especially where its purpose is to improve statistics. This system is a fundamental factor of continued torture and ill treatment. Strik ingly, police see abuse as a normal part of their job. For example, an officer described in an interview his methods of obtaining a confession from a suspect: I took off his sweater, handcuffed him to the radiator and opened the window. It was very cold and windy, and the wind was blowing right into the window. I left the room. After half an hour the bloke started screaming something about his weak kidneys! So after getting some fresh air, he told us everything in details.27 Another respondent explained why unlawful methods of investigation were so common: Say, someone is detained for robbery, but there are many other [suspects]. Of course, you can go round pawn shops, other places. But you can also pressure the guy real hard and get the information: the stuff is in such and such pawn shop. So we went there and seized their records. A guy pawned a cell phone. The victim recognized his phone, and there was a receipt with the bastards name and signa ture. [If we had not used these methods] we would have let him go, and would have had to search for him afterwards.28 Many police officers surveyed noted that the police today cannot carry out their functions without breaking the law. Police training fails to explain to them why both the letter and the spirit of the law are important, so police often disre gard legal provisions as a mere formality, a minor hindrance to good performance. It is absolutely clear that without a radical change and total reorientation of report ing, better policing will be impossible, because police are not interested in achieving real results, as long as required statistics are sufficient to ensure legitimacy before the state. Police abuse is due to the current state of this institution. The lack of resources and skilled personnel combined with inadequate performance management prevent the police force from acting in the interests of the law and the public. Rather than protect citizens and their inter ests, police seek to demonstrate good statistics, breaking the law if it stands in their way. There fore, abuse is a systemic phenomenon in the operation of the Russian police. This combination of problems affecting human and material resources and perform ance management results in a profound distortion of objectives that the Russian police are meant to attain: instead of protecting human rights and civil liberties, etc. (see Article 1 of the Law on Police quoted above), the Interior Ministry forces are focused on bureau cratic procedures (such as demonstrating the statistics required as proof of their legiti macy before superiors at all levels, up to the President), on servicing the interests of ex ecutive authorities, and their own private interests.

THE NEED FOR REFORM

It is obvious that this systemic arbitrariness can only be addressed through a cardinal reform. If the current situation persists, any protection from crime will remain illusory; arbitrary practices will remain an integral part of police operation, while the police will be increasingly used for purposes having nothing to do with public interests.

27 28

From an interview with a convicted police officer, Tver Oblast. From an interview with a convicted police officer, The Republic of Tatarstan.

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

13

As long as police are incapable of defending public interests, they will not be per ceived as legitimate by the public. Notably, while most members of the public have a negative opinion of the police functioning, very few believe that this institution should be dismantled. Citizens are convinced that the police force should exist as an institution, but demand that police practices and performance be changed. This is the reason why many people about 60% of respondents in the Demos Center large scale survey are willing to help police in their work. It can be interpreted as a high credit of confidence which the law enforcement agencies and the government in general will have to repay. Now that both the public and the police themselves are deeply and openly dissatis fied with the situation, the state can no longer pretend to ignore the issues. Top ranking government officials have finally recognized the seriousness of the problems with the law enforcement and have admitted it in a number of official statements. We should mention, in particular, the statement of Prosecutor General Ustinov to the meeting of the Pros ecutor Generals Office Board [Collegium] on 21 January 200529 and the 2005 State of the Nation Address of the Russian President to the Federal Assembly.30 A cardinal reform of the Ministry of Interior forces would not only respond to public concerns, but help Russia meet its international obligations. In this sense, the public opinion within Russia and the international treaties Russia is party to have a similar defi nition of arbitrariness as inaction and ineffectiveness of law enforcement agencies. The Ministry of Interior forces have broad powers to limit citizens rights and liberties: they can use physical force, including lethal; they can detain individuals, etc. International treaties ratified by most countries, including Russia, establish that such restrictions of rights and liberties can only be introduced in the public interests and under certain limited cir cumstances. The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Funda mental Freedoms, for example, provides for the following purposes allowing restrictions of rights and liberties: it can be done in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well being of the country; for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protec tion of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Any restriction of rights and liberties for other purposes is considered to be arbitrary. It follows from the above that the broad powers given to the police to limit citizens rights and liberties are conditioned on the important public function of the police: pro tecting public order and protecting society and individuals from crime. Inability of the Russian police to carry out these functions effectively; their focus on their private, rather than public, interests all this leads the public to question the legitimacy of restrictions imposed by police.

THE PROBLEM OF CONTROL

Of course, police reform in general, and suppressing certain abusive practices in par ticular, will not be an easy task. There have been a number of unsuccessful attempts to address some of the problems especially resented by the public. For example, since 1996 or even earlier, both the Ministry of Interior and the Prosecutors Office have been trying to sup press the police practice of turning down individual complaints and refusing to register

29 30

See: http://genproc.gov.ru/ru/news/news_current.shtml?2005/01/619.html. See: http://president.kremlin.ru/appears/2005/04/25/1223_type63372type82634_87049.shtml.

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Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

them, or avoiding any action on a complaint even if it is accepted and registered. Numer ous inspections resulting in disciplinary sanctions against police officers and their superiors have made little, if any, difference. Since early 2005, we have had reports from the regions that prosecutors increasingly open criminal investigations against police officers for refus ing to take complaints. However, prosecutors admit that even the fear of criminal sanctions cannot suppress the long established practice. For example, Sverdlovsk Oblast Acting Pros ecutor Pavel Kukushkin said in an interview given after a series of inspections: Overall, prosecutors have reversed more than two thousand decisions to reject complaints; we have found 800 such facts within a period of 20 days, [having reviewed] only some of the dis tricts. It means that they conceal [an important number of complaints] as they have always done!31 It is obvious that the police force will continue this practice, because the current systems of performance management and reporting, the personnel policy and the material resources available all push them to maintaining this practice as the only feasible solution. The only way to reform the police is a comprehensive approach, including simulta neous and complementary measures aimed at improving the performance management and target setting systems, as well as human, material and financial resourcing policies to strengthen the police force. It is also important to consider, alongside the problems of police per se, the forces specific interactions with other public and private institutions. It is obvious that the police operate in close contact with prosecutors, lawyers and courts. The way these institutions function can contribute to human rights violations and arbitrariness com mitted by police. A survey of prosecutorial staff and judges has shown that prosecutors and the judiciary are well aware of the violations by police, but prefer to turn a blind eye. This attitude is largely due to a kind of corporate solidarity, because judges, prosecutors and police alike see their mandate primarily as fighting crime and punishing criminals on behalf of the state. Therefore it is much easier for a judge or a prosecutor to support a police officer than to support a suspect, accused, or even a victim of crime. On the other hand, prosecutors and judges are aware of the police forces lack of professional skills and the difficult condi tions of their work. This understanding leads prosecutors and judges to being very tolerant of violations committed by the police in specific investigations, if only for the reason that there is no hope of getting the police to be more professional. As a result, judges and prosecutors supervision over the police operation is weak.

THE POLICE AND THE PUBLIC

A police force that sees its performance as subordinate to narrow corporate and pri vate interests will not be regarded by the public as a professional force. From the public perspective, professionalism of a police officer is not limited to practical skills and expe rience, but implies a certain code of conduct. Without qualities such as the sense of duty, honesty and integrity a police officer cannot project the image of a professional. It is obvious that public expectations of police professionalism come into strong con flict with the double standards perceived by the public as an integral part of law enforce ment practices. It is precisely for this reason that citizens describe ineffectiveness of police

31

See: http://www.publicverdict.org/ru/articles/news/1210805.html

Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

15

as amounting to their total inability to perform their key function understood by the public as protection of citizens and their property from crime. We cannot place all responsibility for systemic arbitrariness of the police force on the government alone. To some extent, the responsibility lies on the entire Russian society. Russians tend to disregard the fact that police arbitrariness against their interests (such as unmotivated violence, inaction, brutality, etc.) and the possibility of informal relations with officers to facilitate private needs (such as bribery, using police to put pressure on or punish someone, etc.) are the two sides of the same coin. This situation perpetuates arbi trariness as a self sustained system. Again, in the same way as police violations can be partially explained, if not justified, by the difficult circumstances they operate in, corruption breeding citizens behavior can be explained by the fact that most members of the public are not prepared to insist on their rights in their interactions with police. Reasons include low legal awareness, lack of access to affordable, high quality legal assistance, and ineffectiveness of the judiciary (the latter being of special relevance to any conflict between a citizen and an agent of the state). It is a vicious circle situation, where the police justify their poor performance by the overall inertia of the public and its refusal to assist the police, while members of the public do not feel they are to blame. From their perspective, poor police performance is a logical outcome of the fact that the police have betrayed the interests of ordinary people. Good law enforcement will hardly be possible without resolving this conflict first. The law enforcement officers surveyed by the Demos Center and its partner network admit that with out public support and appreciation of the law enforcement work performed by police, the latter cannot expect to improve their performance. Similarly, 40% of the surveyed citizens believe that effective crime control requires joint efforts by the police and the public. A well developed, institutionalized civic control mechanism could compensate for the publics lack of skills or opportunities to defend their rights. Currently, only human rights groups have been making attempts to establish such controls. Other active civil society groups interested in establishing control over police conduct and in facilitating constructive interactions between the police and the public could be involved in this work by creating forums for negotiation. Such constructive interaction could reduce arbitrariness and improve the perform ance of the Russian police and the countrys overall law enforcement system. Our find ings, including the findings of the large scale survey of the general public, convincingly demonstrate that reforms in this sphere have no prospects without first harmonizing the relations between the citizens and the police. Accordingly, a major part of the police reform should involve measures aimed at improving police accountability to their com munities. Such measures will help break the wall dividing the police and the public. To meet this challenge, it is important, in particular, to develop the neighborhood police service, which is currently not getting much attention from the authorities. A neighborhood police officer can serve as an interface between the police force and the local community and partially restore in the public mind the image of Uncle Steve (a friendly neighborhood policeman, the hero of a popular childrens book published in the Soviet times; many respondents of the large scale survey have mentioned this character, which means that it still speaks to many Russians as a positive and humanis tic image of a policeman). However, now the police force is largely seen as a repressive institution servicing the state. In this context, of special significance are the responses of those citizens who have been vic

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Reforming law enforcement: overcoming arbitrary work practices

timized by crime. Analyzing responses to the large scale survey we found, inter alia, that members of the public see a situation where police apprehend a thief not as police duty before the individual whose property has been stolen, but primarily as police duty before the state. We need to note that the citizens are right in thinking this, because under the current system of command and control, police are oriented to serve the state, rather than the pub lic, and the existing performance evaluation framework is focused exclusively on the rela tions between the police and the state. There have been attempts to integrate public opinion in the system of assessing police performance, but, as noted above, they failed due to inabil ity of the current system to integrate qualitative parameters. Nevertheless, we believe that police accountability to their local communities will encourage cooperation between police and citizens, which the survey respondents mentioned as one of their top recommendations, alongside the recommendation that police should be closer to citizens.

SUGGESTED AREAS OF REFORM

The research project undertaken by the Demos Center and its regional partners did not set a goal as ambitious as preparing a fully fledged proposal for comprehensive reform of the law enforcement system. Instead, we made an attempt to identify reasons why arbitrariness is so common in the Russian police, to look at how the public and the Ministry of Interior officers see the problem, and to use these findings to inform rec ommendations on what could be done to ensure genuine protection of individual rights and liberties. We cannot expect good police performance without adequately resourcing their opera tion. Rather than increase government funding of the Interior Ministry, what is needed is better control over the use of funds, and a mechanism of their reallocation within the system. We are convinced that the government can achieve it in the nearest future. Human resources should be placed at the heart of the reform. It means (1) adequate staffing with rank and file police (especially neighborhood police officers32) and techni cal assistants, as needed for each police office to deal successfully with all their day to day tasks, with regard to regional specifics; (2) personnel policies enabling the force to screen out officers who do not meet the moral, professional and psychological require ments for police service, and (3) a revised police training curriculum, both for initial and continuous training, with a specific focus on legal awareness and public accountability. We should emphasize that investing funds in the neighborhood police service is nec essary, but not sufficient. Neighborhood police units should be given enough space to set their own objectives and priorities. To achieve this, the entire law enforcement system must be decentralized; otherwise all attempts to improve police performance are doomed. As a key component of the law enforcement reform, the system of target setting and reporting must change. Target setting must be based on a process whereby national needs and priorities will be coordinated with specific regional interests. This process should involve regional ex ecutive and legislative authorities, and the local self government.
32 Normally, there is one neighborhood police officer per each area with 5,000 population. However, this standard does not take into account the population density, i.e. the area can be anywhere between a few blocks of flats to a few villages. The vaster the area, the less efficient are neighborhood police, especially in terms of crime prevention.

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The reporting framework should, as a minimum, include qualitative indicators (ob tained, inter alia, through periodic surveys) and independent assessment (by regional and local authorities, and civil society watchdogs). Criteria for raises, bonuses, and pro motions should be revised accordingly. In addition, adequate police accountability to the local community must be ensured. In this respect, setting up a system of civil control over police while formally not a part of the law enforcement reform, it would definitely serve to improve police performance and facilitate better relations between law enforcement and the public.