Russias Solvent Union Collapse and Economic Growth and Development - Research Paper Example

Police reform in post communist Russia Introduction For the past twenty years since the collapse of the Russia’s Soviet Union, the country has been going through many challenges and predominate dissatisfaction due to poor work of its police force. Most of the researches conducted since the collapse of Russia Communism in the year 1991 concludes that Russia’s public satisfaction ranges between 30% to 50% and a large number of the country’s population were not happy with the performance of the police sector. According to White, since the year 1991 when the Russia’s Solvent Union collapse, it spent more than 30% a situation that drove it debts and brought many negative impacts towards economic growth and development. There was need of the country to find means of addressing the issue. Some of the Russia’s political leaders such as Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin have tried to enforce several reforms that can replace the collapsed communism. Have the efforts put forward in one of the major policy issues such as police reform in post communist Russia; have the policy reforms had a positive effect on Russia? What political controversies have hindered the process in police reform? This research aids to a detailed discussion that will answer this two questions. Public image of police force in Russia According to recent studies, an approximately 34% of the total Russia population seems to be satisfied with the country’s local police performance compared to 52% population, which is not satisfied. This persistent displeasure with the police force for the past many years in Russia is due to the public damage caused by the police force hence it is a governmental institution. Some studies suggest that over the past 20 years after the collapse of Russia’s communism, an approximately 70% of the Russia’s population seemed to distrust the police force (White 45). Both public trust and satisfaction remained low in the country without any change between the years 1992-2012. According to a study conducted in the year 2011 by WCIOM, an approximately 53% of Russia’s population have trust with the country’s police force, 22% of the population claim that the police institution offers help to the citizens and the remaining 13% argue that the police institution’s services and activities have negative impacts to the well-being of the society. Another study conducted in the year 2012 conclude that only 31% of the country’s population trust the police institution and the remaining percentage is afraid of the activities and services of the police institution (Gerber and Sarah 5). The poor public image due to harmful police activities and services in Russia is not a unique since many post-soviet nations suffer a similar problem of legitimacy services within the police institutions (Skilling 396). Despite this, the problem with Russia is more complex compared to that of other post-soviet nations. According to most studies conducted within the European’s countries suggest that Russia has the smallest percentage of public trust with law enforcement services compared to other countries (Johnson 383). This is because the law enforcement institutions have being using their powers poorly hence affecting the well-being of the Russian society negatively. A large percentage of the Russian population has been protesting against the country’s police force services due to its public and society harm. The Russian public trust on the law enforcement institutions is lower than in the other post soviet countries. This is evident according to the 2004 study, which ranked the country second-lowest nation out of the thirteen post-soviet nations on the police public trust. Additionally, according to the Gallup World Poll of the year 2011, Russia proved to have only 31% public trust of law enforcement services and had the lowest percentage compared to all other post-soviet nations (Gerber and Sarah 15). Criticism of police reform of 2010-2011 In 2010 to 2011, the government of Russia implemented various essential steps to enable it improve the services and activities of law enforcement institution and advance the public trust towards the police (Skilling 386). Some of these measures were increasing benefits, salaries, and thorough evaluation of personnel certificates to ensure that they employ the most competent police officers that can perform their responsibility accordingly. The current minister of that era, Medvedev announced that the police officers’ salary was to be increased in the year 2012 with some other benefits and bonuses from the new legislation. Subsequently, the salary and benefits of police officers doubled in the 2012 through 2012 (Johnson 391). According to Bunce, the police recertification was complete by the end of 2011 with 90% for all existing police officers and an approximately 95% for the management personnel who passed the review. This resulted to 20% cut of the existing police officers in order to achieve better services and police performance. In addition, there was implementation of many essential measures to shape the discipline and professionalism of the police officers of Russia. In the year 2009, the department of Internal Affairs came up with a Professional Ethics’ code for the law enforcement officers specifying the rules and regulations as well as police officers’ responsibilities. In the year 2011, the Ministry of Internal Affairs implemented a new law “On Police Service” that stated that police superiority orders were mandatory for on duty police officers (Gerber and Sarah 26). The order also stated that the incompliance and insubordination with it results to punishment through various disciplinary deeds. The procedure of assessing and reporting issues in the law enforcement institution changed in the year 2011. Before, the system entailed that the predetermined statistical indicators’ measurement were compared to the past year’s statistics, which included crime clearance, crime rate, and number of the offenders who have been prosecuted in Russia (Johnson 400). The police force and its officers facing penalties for not hitting their targets, practices, which conform to the ideology of massive manipulation and refusal of crimes’ registry and falsification of similar criminal cases. In accordance to MVD, the newly adopted assessment regulations of the year 2011 aimed at the improvement of police reporting situation and decrease the requirement to statistics manipulation. In addition, many political leaders played key roles to ensure that police reform took place. To begin with, in the year 2012, Kolokolstev, the new minster in the MVD announced his individual responsibility policy for the police chiefs. He decided to be sacking the superior officers in case of any crime committed by the subordinate staffs (Favarel‐Garrigues and Anne 127). So far, the number of the high profile officers who lost their positions due to crimes committed by the subordinate staffs increased. Another initiative that minister Kolokolstev played was to ensure banning of police officers’ retrospective discharge for those who committed administrative and criminal violations. In the past years, the law enforcement institution fired the police officers who committed such crimes in order to avoid bad publicity as well as excluding them from all official reporting and statistics. In addition, there are still current efforts of cleansing the police officer from consumption of drugs and alcohol, which contribute to their poor services and activities. This is because drunkard police officers could perform unpleasing activities such as unnecessary killings and injuries hence this was among the major influences of public distrust towards the service and activities of law enforcement institutions (Gerber and Sarah 33). The minister asserted that routine drug and alcohol testing must be conducted of the police officers as well as psychological evaluation. Kolokolstev argued that this was among the best approaches of reducing police officers’ criminal crimes. The minister additionally encouraged Russian citizens to be reporting any alcohol or drug abuse by the police officers (Favarel‐Garrigues and Anne 19). There were also other reform measures put forth by political leaders such as Putin, Yeltsin, and Gorbachev. Some of the reform ideas of these leaders were similar although most of them had varying views. For instance, the Prime Minister Putin oversaw a large-scale police and military reform in Russia (Easter 185). His leadership during his presidency marked a great change in the law enforcement institutions in Russia since Putin brought up several essential reforms in the department of the country’s security, and both the Russian military and police reform. This is to say that the efforts of president Putin clearly carried Russia to the opposite side. This is because in the last year of his successor’s leadership, Dmitry Medvedev, there was implementation of new reform meant to transform the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), which was the ministry managing the police officers and their operations. The other political leaders who pushed for the occurrence of the police reform in Russia include Yeltsin, Gorbachev, between many other (Weigle and Jim 17). All these political leaders were prominent in trying to shape the Russian law enforcement institution as well as their activities and services in order to increase the public trust towards the police service, which most people argued that they were hurting and posing negative impacts to the entire society. Finally, in the year 2012, there was creation of an independent unit in the Investigation Committee for the purpose of investigating every crime committed by the police officers (Favarel‐Garrigues and Anne 16). Before this, various agencies played the role the crimes investigation and it was later known that these agencies lacked coordination and necessary resources to conduct the investigations. The police reform of the years 2010-2011 was widely criticized as many of its critics claimed that the reform had a lot of inconsistencies, abrupt, and bad superficial characters (Easter 188). The critics also claimed that the reform was unable to address the central issue and problems affecting the system of the police, which led to lack of public trust and transparency. Some specific measures also considered to strengthen the system of the police force also received high rate of criticism. A report documented by the Clean Hands Organization portrays that a salary increment for the subordinates police officers only ranked between 5 to 10% and for the high supervisors was much higher in the year 2012 (Favarel‐Garrigues and Anne 13). The Russian media has also exposed the news that those who suffered the personnel cuts were only the low-ranking police officers whereas the managerial supervisors experienced no cut off. Instead, this followed the closure of most police precincts in the rural areas hence worsening the situation since the police services were unavailable and inaccessible to a large group of residents. In addition, the personnel review process (recertification) was not transparent to Russian public, media, and Non Governmental Organizations (Easter 197). This resulted in many Russians believing that the law enforcement institutions retained the most corrupt police officers and the recertification mechanism only aimed at terminating the honest police officers. The police officers themselves claimed that the review process was prone superior officers’ abuse. The changes put into the police system of assessment and reporting proved to be more superficial. Although several criterions used as estimation methods of crime went through some changes, the central issue is still the same, that is, the police officers receive some penalties for failure to achieve the predetermined crime statistics’ indicators. In addition, public surveys keep on playing limited roles in the system of police assessment (Weigle and Jim 5). The new “On Police Service” law implemented in the year 2011 makes the subordinate police officers more dependable and the individual dependability of the latter results to additional incentive for concealing and crime the police officers commits from reporting. The current Investigation Committee has qualified staff of view investigators with the role of investigating many crimes, which the police officers commit annually. Staff psychologists from the police unit termed as being fully dependent to the police chiefs carry out the implemented alcohol and drug test as well as psychological evaluation. Russian media reported that the police chiefs currently put much pressure on the psychologists to ensure that they produce favorable outcomes bout the police officers (Easter 200). However, there is doubt whether the abuse associated with the results of psychologists about alcohol and drug abuse will end. The benefits of the police reform in Russia The implementation of the new police reform in Russia has marks many benefits to the societies as well as the entire society. For instance, the current laws in the law enforcement institutions provide remarkable powers and privileges to the police officers. This serves as a motivating tool that motivates the police officers to carry out their duties in a timely and perfect manner. Due to good performance of the police officers, security has clearly improved in most parts of Russia hence improving the well-being of the societies and the individuals. Before the implementation of the police reform in Russia, people could find themselves into custody even without enough evidence or given a chance to defend themselves. Nowadays, the police only detain individuals who are suspects, escaping or even avoiding police arrest, which is under investigation, or any other crime. Although everyone has a right of inviolability over another one’s domicile, there is a set of rules indicating the situations when the police officers can use lawful entry or even break in if necessary. The police officers must then give the owner a notification within a minimum of twenty-four hours of the entry. In addition, due to the implementation of the new police reform in Russia, crime prevention has improved. There are fewer cases about insecurity in the country since the law enforcement institutions are now carrying out the role as required. Since insecurity is one of the keys to poor economical status and poor social development, good crime prevention in Russia has positively affected the economic status of the country as well as improving the society’s well-being. For instance, there is improved websites and public council creations contributing to effective crime prevention. Lastly, legality and fairness has improved within the law enforcement institutions in Russia. Criminality is currently unknown within the Russian police institutions although the process of dealing with crimes is relatively slow. Due to implementation of the new police reform, cases of corruption are minimal in Russia. This has highly led to economical growth and development in the country. Conclusion Based on this research paper, it is logical to conclude that despite the implementation of the new police reform, disciplinary issues will continue to hart the Russians citizens in future time. However, in order to end this issue, the MVD leadership must find necessary measures on the way to strengthen professional discipline among the police officers and reduce corruption in the country. Most of these claims have been for many years discussed in various studies and researches as well as Non Governmental Organizations. Russia to ensure its growth and development, it must ensure that there are changes incorporated to the structure as well as the missions of its police system. This is because the current police reform (2010-2011) was an individual-reform by the MVD leadership. Even though a large group of the society members was willing to take place in decision-making process, they were virtually not involved. The country leaders should understand that the key policy decisions to govern a country need a public discussion whereby there is involvement of both the local authorities and civil society members. Work cited Bunce, Valerie. "Rethinking recent democratization." World Politics 55.2 (2003). Easter, Gerald M. Postcommunist Regime Change in Russia and the NIS. World Politics 49 (1997): 184-211. Favarel‐Garrigues, Gilles, and Anne Le Huerou. State and the multilateralization of policing in post‐Soviet Russia. Policing and Society 14.1 (2004): 13-30. Gerber, Theodore P., and Sarah E. Mendelson. "Public experiences of police violence and corruption in contemporary Russia: a case of predatory policing?." Law & Society Review 42.1 (2008): 1-44. Johnson, Janet Elise. "Domestic violence politics in post-Soviet states." Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 14.3 (2007): 380-405. Skilling, H. Gordon. "Interest groups and communist politics." World Politics 18.03 (1966): 435-451. Weigle, Marcia A., and Jim Butterfield. Civil society in reforming communist regimes. Comparative Politics 25.1 (1992): 1-23. White, Stephen. Understanding Russian Politics. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011. Print. Read More