1.6. Mechanism for police activity optimization through interaction with the public
I shall explain the origin of the term “interaction”. In analysis and description of the functional aspect of the police-public relations the application of the notion of interaction becomes in my opinion necessary.
The term “interaction” is used in a wide or narrow meaning. In sectoral legal sciences it is used in a narrow meaning as a joint or an agreed in space and in time activity of two or more subjects for achievement of one or a few common aims. The synonym to this meaning of the word “interaction” is “cooperation”.
To analyze the functional aspect of the police-public relations I introduce the notion of interaction in a wide meaning. It means any influence of two or more subjects (also objects) on each other.
Thus, the interaction between the police and the public is an objective phenomenon. It exists irrespective of the fact where it is realized by the subjects or not. It has both a positive (eufunctional – P. Merton’s term) and negative branch. There is also a zero on this scale. According to the axiologic scale of the public activity assessment a zero is valued negatively. In our attempt to construct a system model a zero is a zero.
2. Problematic Situation
As a problematic situation we understand here the state of the system which needs restructuring.
For a normal researcher it is evident that the prestige of the Russian militia is low today, its relations with a civil society are tense and their interaction is dysfunctional.
Therefore I feel some distrust to the data of some sociologic analyses which declare the growth of the militia authority for the last two-three years. It is certainly possible in some years in single regions.
But upon the whole such optimistic data, in my opinion, is resulted from customer’s expectations. I do not think that the data distortion is the result of direct juggling of the facts. It is rather the result of the imperfection of the research methods used. In particular, a widely used practice of the direct introduction of a question under inquiry into questionnaires and interview sheets causes a provocative influence on persons under survey. If you ask anybody directly: “Do you respect me?” then an answer is as a rule affirmative even if a respondent is absolutely reasonable and irrespective of his actual opinion on the matter concerned.
The research data is also affected by imperfect versions of answers to private questions. For example, in the questionnaire used at the All-Russia Research Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (ARRI of MIA) for the question on factors having a negative effect on the militia prestige they offer the choice of the following hardly inter-distinguishable versions of the answer: “indifference, low culture of contacts with citizens” and “bureaucratism, formalism, delays in consideration of matters”; “exaction, bribery, corrupt” and “use of an official position for private aims”.
When preparing this report I have carried out a brief investigation. I asked some citizens (they are neither lawyers nor representatives of law enforcement bodies, but some of them worked in the militia in the past) to discuss the relations of the militia and the public. I describe below the opinions of this joint public expert.
Both the public and the militia try to minimize the possibility of their contacts.
A citizen appeals to the militia only in an extreme need. He/she will never go there if there is any other way out of a difficult situation. He/she does not even inform the militia about all crimes committed against him/her.
Let us compare the above point of view with the data of the survey carried out by Research Laboratory-9 (RL-9) of the ARRI of the MIA. February 1997. Over a half (52,3 %) of the citizens subjected to criminal encroachments in Nizhny Novgorod region did not appealed to the militia for help. In Kostroma and in Kirov regions it comes to 39,3 % and 47,6 %, respectively[513].
In cases when a citizen still went there with a statement on a crime, militia officers tried to stop him/her at the doorstep of their militia station.
No doubt that the militia today needs to provide its own safety. It is also evident that the interests of safety come in contradiction with the interests of the provision of free contacts of a citizen with militiamen.
A standard method to settle this contradiction is to arrive at a compromise. But the procedure set for reception of citizens by the majority of Russian law enforcement bodies impedes as much as possible the access of citizens to the militia.
I think it is one of the significant deviations from the international legal standards. It not only worsens the relations between the Russian militia and the public but also hinders the access of citizens to justice[514].
According to the data of the before-mentioned research all interviewees from the law enforcement bodies have noted that there are some unregistered crimes in their region. 11 % of those respondents have determined their percentage as over 50 %. The rest of respondents are in the equal ratio: up to 20 % and from 20 to 50 %[515].
It is interesting that those who compiled the questionnaire did not even envisage a version of the answer excluding the availability of unregistered crimes.
In my own estimation the ratio of unregistered crimes to all committed crimes is no less than 95 %.
A militiaman treats today a citizen who appealed to him as a salesman to a buyer in the socialist past: Let me work and do not disturb me.
I would like to add the following; at present when the militia has again to answer for the growth of criminality, there has been arising a new urge to regulate statistics and to prevent sufferers from appealing to militia duty units.
According to the data of the same research over 30 % of officers of the law enforcement bodies have defined as the reason of offences against a law and service discipline the desire to provide high indices.
For a year and a half a fourth or a third of respondents have regularly stated that rather often or sometimes their management put them to a position when they have to infringe a law[516].
On the other side if a militiaman addresses to a citizen the latter will try to minimize their contacts or at least to avoid any significant consequences of those contacts.
The citizens’ refusal to participate in investigative actions became so frequent that made the institute of attesting witnesses be problematic. Today some enterprising investigators go to searches and inspections with their own attesting witnesses.
It becomes a problem to obtain any explanations and testimonial evidences from citizens.
I would like to describe two more opinions of the joint public expert:
Militiamen resort seldom to cooperation with citizens by the following two reasons: (I) they are not able to cooperate with the public except in some ordinary situations; (2) they are afraid of inadequate reaction to their call to such cooperation.
The public considers the social role of the militia quite different than the militia itself and otherwise than the state authority.
The public appraises the militia activity otherwise than the state authority
I think that an image of the Russian militia formed in the public’s eyes as an obedient agent of one of the branches of the power (an executive one) is a deviation from the international legal standards with regards to the functions of the police and to the police and power relations[517] but it promotes to a great extent the estrangement of the both of them (the police and the power) from the public.
The subordination of almost all the Russian police divisions and services to the Central power has the same negative effect on the relations with the public.
Speaking here on the deviation from the international legal standards in Russia I cannot undertake to affirm that they are followed strictly in all the rest countries.
2.1. The negative effect of unforeseen consequences of official improvements on the relations between the police and public[518] (5, p. 110 to 117).
For any great structural change in the activity of the law enforcement bodies one should foresee both the nearest and more distant future results, any operative and social consequences.
In the seventies a number of considerable reforms in the militia system took place. These were the formation of movable militia groups, almost a complete substitution of street posts by patrols, the increase of the quantity of motor vehicles in the militia, the introduction of militiamen on active service.
Along with some obvious operative benefits of any of these reforms all of them in the long run and in total had a negative influence on the relations between the police and the public.
Under their influence the relations between a militiaman and a citizen change from partially private or personal (the relations between Ivan and Peter) to absolutely official ones (the relations between a militia man and a citizen).
The improvement of the educational level of district militia officers also resulted unexpectedly. (In 1965 there were opened Higher Militia Schools of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs for training district militia officers with higher education. Though that specialization did not last for a long time.) District militia officers with higher educational standard were promoted. A greater number of them was admitted to criminal investigation departments. Some officers left their district service because of that service rushing from preventive measures to field supervision.