Избранные труды

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.