POLICE

The police in Serbia has come a long way since 2001 and new democratic foun-dations have been laid upon which the police can fulfil their duty to serve the country’s citizens. There have been four crucial changes.

Over the last eight years (2000-2008) we have seen important and positive changes in the security sector of the Republic of Serbia. Those changes are one of the main products of Serbia’s gradual, sometimes laborious, yet ongoing democratization and liberalisation.

In all previous studies of corruption in Serbian police the same risks were identified, and major one among them is politicization, BCSP Researcher Sasa Djordjevic said at the press conference in the Media Center.

Police corruption control and social consequences of corruption in the police in Serbia are two main topics of the seventh issue of Collection of Policy Papers on Police Reform in Serbia.

The latest issue of Collection of Policy Papers propose answers on building safe community in Serbia, the position of the police in the new Criminal Procedure Code, and the role of ethics in policing.

Collection of papers and discussions GORAGRAF and the Centre for Civil-Military Relations, Belgrade, 2004

The book combines the papers prepared by the researchers and associates within a project on the "Protection of Human Rights in the Army and the Police of the FR of Yugoslavia". The whole project, including the publishing effort, was implemented with the support of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, London and Freedom House, Budapest.

BCSP Researcher Saša Đorđević attracted significant media attention on the subject of community policing after he assessed, during the presentation of recommendations for continuing the police reform, that repression has been popularised instead of prevention, which is reflected in the promotion of the minister and police through major arrests.

The BCSP team implemented the training of 60 police officers from all 27 police departments in Serbia on action planning in their local communities on 21-25th of May.