Избранные труды

In this connection two aspects of significance of the relations between the police and public are formed.

First. The normal relations between the police and the public arouse the feeling of some comfort or safety in the latter.

Second. The normal relations between the police and the public can optimize the police activity and through it the activity of the total lawenforcement system.

By their content the relations between the police and the public have both an official and individual personified nature. The higher the level of the latter, the better the relations as a general rule.

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.