The reform of policing in the Russian Federation.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Date: 01 August 2005
• Author: Solomon, Jr., Peter H.
• Published date: 01 August 2005
• Author: Solomon, Jr., Peter H.

The reform of policing in the Russian Federation involves an unusual combination of challenges. These include finding the best distribution of police powers and responsibilities among three levels of government (federal, regional and local); confronting an excessive degree of commercialisation of policing; and developing 'democratic' policing that meets standards of professionalism, accountability and legitimacy. In the new millenium, talk about police reform in Russia has focused on organisational questions and ways of administering police functions. Relatively little attention has been given to the content of policing and police relations with the public. Significant reform of policing in Russia has not yet begun.

**********

In the 21st century Russia faces a complex array of challenges in improving its policing. Most of these challenges are found in one or another country, but the combination is peculiarly Russia's and reflects its recent troubled history.

The structure of government in the late Soviet period was centralised, and the agencies of law enforcement were no exception (Shelley, 1996). The movements for ethnic autonomy associated with the collapse of partocracy and the breakup of the USSR made the establishment of an authentic federal system in Russia de rigueur, and the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation did establish one on paper (Konstitutsiia, 2002). Based mainly on the German model, it placed most law enforcement activity into the area of concurrent jurisdiction of the federal government and its subject governments. Just how responsibility for policing should be divided in practice among not just two but three levels of government (federal, regional and local) became especially topical in the Putin years, and, as we shall see, occupies a central place in the discourse of police reform today. But whether such a large and undergoverned country as Russia can handle the decentralisation of power required even in a centralised federal system is far from certain, and doubts about this act as a constraint on the restructuring of the police.

The old Soviet order was not only centralised; it involved an unusual degree of government ownership of productive property, which in turn was administered by government agencies. The decline of the power of the CPSU went hand in hand with a 'spontaneous privatisation' of productive capacity, which compelled lawmakers in the USSR and Russia to play catch-up and try to guide the process. By the mid 1990s, Russia had experienced perhaps the largest privatisation of state property in world history, and had done so in a way that favored persons with good positions and connections. (Goldman, 2003; Shleifer & Treisman, 2000). Not surprisingly, police officials of all kinds took advantage of the opportunities and the result was an extreme form of the commercialisation of policing, especially of the protection function (Volkov, 2002). To what degree this was part of the worldwide process of 'multilateralisation' of policing, or a dangerous undermining of state authority tied to corruption, needs careful assessment. (Bayley & Shearing, 2001; Favarel-Garrigues & Le Huerou, 2004). More important here is the degree to which reformers see this situation as problematic and give it priority on the reform agenda.

Finally, the former USSR was (in)famous for having a political regime that was nondemocratic. Political leaders were accountable not to the public but to their peers within the upper ranks of communist party and government officials. The main police agencies were subordinated to those leaders, and police officials were accountable to them rather than to the public. Police of all kinds were known for abuses of human rights; levels of pay and training of ordinary police left much to be desired; and at least petty corruption was rife. Police of this kind did not correspond to the goal of creating a new democracy. Arguably, the achievement of democratic transition, let alone the consolidation of a democratic regime, required that Russia start to develop what is now called 'democratic policing', a challenge shared with many countries that have not also experienced federalisation or privatisation. Students of this process have helpfully parsed 'democratic policing' to include skilled professionalism, effective accountability and sustained legitimacy (Caparini & Marenin, 2004). What Russia has done or may do to achieve these goals represents another dimension of its reform of policing.

This article begins by characterising the nature of policing in the Russian Federation as of the start of the new millennium and assessing the impact of reforms to date. It goes on to analyse the discourse and politics of police reform under Vladimir Putin, with due attention to what is and is not on the agenda and the obstacles to getting proposed changes adopted and implemented.

The State of Policing in Russia

The core policing activities (excluding political policing and specialised policing such as of the tax system) have remained within the domain of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and its subordinate departments at the regional level (which in turn control municipal policing). The Soviet era pattern of dual subordination, whereby regional police departments were at one and the same time part of regional governments and the federal ministry, continued into the post-Soviet period. For example, the appointment of regional police chiefs required the consent both of the governor of a region and of the Minister. Likewise, police drew on the budgetary support of both levels of government. Given the size of Russia and President Yeltsin's readiness to make concessions to the subjects of the Federation in exchange for loyalty (implemented through the bilateral treaties), the mid and late 1990s witnessed a marked decentralisation of power from the centre to the regions and republics (Kahn, 2002, ch. 6). This process extended to the police, so that de facto much of the country's police was controlled by the governors (Taylor, 2005).

When he became President in 2000, Vladimir Putin resolved to reverse this dangerous decentralisation of power. One method was through the creation of seven federal districts, each of which received a branch of the presidential administration and new layers of the Procuracy and Ministry of Internal Affairs, charged with supervising what regional law enforcement did (Kahn, 2002, ch. 8; Reddaway & Orttung, 2004, pp. 35-37). At the same time, in 2001 Putin succeeded (with help from the Constitutional Court of the RF) in taking the governors out of the process of appointing regional police chiefs, thereby making that right the exclusive preserve of the centre. To break police ties with localities, Putin's new Minister of Internal Affairs Boris Gryzlov parachuted new police leaders in from other regions, and budgetary support from the Ministry grew in proportion to that provided lower down. (Taylor, 2005) By 2005 most observers thought that an appropriate balance of power between the centre and periphery in law enforcement had been reestablished, but there remained concern that proposed reforms might reopen old wounds.

Throughout the post-Soviet period the Ministry of Internal Affairs consisted of a series of semiautonomous functional agencies, whose number and arrangement changed many times. At the core stood the Department for Maintaining Public Order, responsible for coordinating police activity at all levels and in all regions, and at times separate from it an Inspectorate for Road Traffic Safety. Along with these there were a series of departments dealing with drug crimes, economic crimes, and organised crime, and separate from all of these policing units was the Department for the Conduct of Pretrial Investigations, whose investigators, supposedly jurists, prepared the case files (dossiers) on persons accused of crimes for whose investigation the Ministry was responsible (i.e., most criminal cases; Bennett, 2000; Lipinski, 2000). Joining the Ministry after 2000 were the federal tax police and the migration service (previously separate agencies of...