Police Reform

Regular meeting of the Joint Board of the MIA of Russian Federation and Tajikistan

Yesterday, the delegation from the MIA of Russia, chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kolokol’tsev, arrived in Dushanbe.

 According to the press-center of the MIA Tajikistan, he is accompanied by the Deputies Minister of Internal Affairs – Head of the Investigation Department of the MIA RF Yuriy Alekseev, State Secretary – Deputy of the Minister of Internal Affairs Igor’ Zubov, Deputies of the Minister of Internal Affairs Viktor Kiryanov, Sergey Gerasimov, as well as the Head of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation of the MIA RF, Viktor Golovanov, and the Head of the Main Directorate on Combating Extremism of the MIA RF, Timur Valiulin. This meaningful delegation takes part on the regular Joint Board meeting, where today such important issues, as cooperation between the Ministries of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and Tajikistan in combating extremism and organized crime are considered. We will inform more in detail our readers on its results, while this message will narrate about the progress of the Police Reform implementation in Russia, which has started in 2010, after signing a Decree “On some measures to reform the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation” by the President of RF. The Decree envisaged the implementation of events to exclude duplicating, superfluous and alien functions to “Police”. For this purpose the Federal Law “On Police”, a number of other laws, aimed at the optimization of internal affairs’ structure of the Russian Federation, were adopted. However, according to majority of experts, Police Reform in Russia did not succeed. General Vladimir Ovchinsky has frankly admitted that he can not understand the current processes in the MIA: «It is a weird reform, which is hardly similar to reform. Where is the reform concept itself: what to reform, for the sake of what and why? The reform itself never and by nobody was discussed in public, there is not and was not its concept. Neither structure, nor activity directions, nothing at all is ever discussed! The «reform» was not discussed even in the Parliament, and all the efforts to conduct Parliamentary hearings were properly suppressed». 
Meanwhile, Tajikistan took into account all the disadvantages and neglects made during the Police Reform implementation in Russia. Our experts in cooperation with the OSCE have started the reform process from drafting the Police Reform Strategy, as well as from developing the Strategy Implementation Plan. In Russia the order “On creation of enhanced working group on further reforming of internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation,” which will develop a Concept of the MIA reform in Russia, was signed only in June 2012, i.е., after two and a half years since beginning of the police reform. According to the press centre of the Russian MIA, “the goal of establishing the Working group – ensuring real cooperation with the experts community, with those, who are familiar very well with service in the Internal Affairs bodies and, who suggest constructive solutions. Famous Human Rights activists, State delegates, lawyers, experts with working experience in the MIA of Russia and other law enforcement agencies are included into the group». The main critic of implementing reforms Vladimir Ovchinskiy is appointed as the responsible Secretary, who is, moreover, is assigned by the new Minister of internal affairs as his Assistant. Hence, the MIA of Russia switched to the next stage of reforming, when the efficiency of reform was evaluated, and further steps were identified. The working group has already developed further reform strategy, where it is mentioned that the main positive factor of «Nurgaliev» reform was retention of cruel vertical centralised management within the MIA system, the adoption of legislative acts, corresponding to international standards of Police activities.
At the same time, “the changes have not fully led to results, expected by civil society. Unfortunately, the violations of law in the internal affairs bodies are still occurring. During the evaluation a significant amount of non-relevant staff was fired, which by itself could not solve the task of fundamental update and improving the core staff’s professionalism. Basically, the same Police staff with its positive and negative qualities was transferred to the Police service” – noted in the Concept. It became clear that without changing the systems of accounting and registration of the statements and messages on the crimes and violations, without effective improvement of the responses to them, without abandoning deep-rooted stereotypes, assessment of the police activities efficiency, stimulating staff to conceal unlawful facts, manipulation of statistics to create a picture of alleged wellbeing of operational activities, the goal of police reform will not be achieved. State automated system of legal statistics and federal center for processing statistic data on the crime status will be created. The MIA of Russia is assured that the system will ensure transparency, validity and completeness of accounting information regarding crimes. It is also suggested to test a pilot system of the statement registration on crimes and missing persons: integration of formalized statement/application blanks; assurance of mandatory assessment of Police staff actions by claimants; the use of psychologists-volunteers while working with victims of the crimes and receiving statements. We remind that in the draft of the Police Reform Strategy of Tajikistan the priority is also given to the issues of creating qualitatively new system of registration and accounting of statements on crimes. “From strategic perspective an improvement of Community Policing is linked to such organization, when Police is perceived as a governmental authority, treating its citizen - crime victim – with maximum responsiveness, readiness to ensure his/her protection, offer effective measures of conflict resolution, compensation of the damage, restoration of violated rights” – is noted in the Strategy. According to one of the authors of the draft Concept, delegation of the State Duma of Russia Alexander Khinshtein, “new criteria for the Police activities efficiency will be introduced. It will be assessed by indicators of real crime quantity’s identification, timeliness and quality of responses to them, fullness and quickness of restoring legitimate interests of claimants, as well as based on the study of citizens opinion pertaining personal security and activities of internal affairs bodies. The assessment of the Police efficiency, first of all, will take into consideration the abilities to work with the problems of local communities and to engage local residents into the law enforcement process”. This is far from the complete list of activities, included in the draft Concept of Russian Police Reform. Authors of the Concept emphasize that proposed by them directions for further reforming are not comprehensive, and that an offer to civil society to make their proposals on creation actually modern, efficient and competent Russian Police of XXI century. The draft Strategy of Police Reform in Tajikistan was posted in the MIA website from August, however, according to the website administrator, no proposals to either change or to amend the contents of the Strategy were submitted.