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.

Private security companies (PSCs) in Serbia have been active since the early 1990s. PSCs fall under the category of non-state actors authorised to use force. It is estimated that these companies today employ between 20 and 60 thousand people in Serbia.

There are three organisations in Serbia with these responsibilities; the Security-Information Agency (SIA), the Military Security Agency (MSA) and the Military Intelligence Agency (MoI). The SIA is directly subordinated to the government and has the status of a special republic organisation, while both the MSA and MoI are organisational units (administrative bodies) within the Ministry of Defence (MoD) subordinated to the defence minister, and thus also to the government.

Since it emerged from the donor and academic communities in the 1990s, the concept of Security Sector Reform (SSR) has been through numerous transformations. SSR can be defined as "the process through which security sector actors adapt to the political and organizational demands of transformation." The aim of SSR is "the efficient and effective provision of state and human security within a framework of democratic governance."

During the last couple of decades, civil society organisations have became actors in the security sector. Good governance of the security sector is not only effective exercise of the economic, political and administrative competences of government, but also requires the involvement of non-statutory actors in the control and oversight of state institutions.

The courts and public prosecution have two important functions within the security sector. The first is to combat crime by means of prosecution and punishment of criminal offenders. The second is judicial control over executive actors in the security sector.

Prisons should be ‘safe places’; there should be no riots and escapes, and should not be a places to plan or commit criminal offences. The situation in Serbia, however, does not meet these requirements, as will be shown below.

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 this paper we will present the assumptions underlying the research conducted by the Centre for Civil-Military Relations team within the "Mapping and Monitoring Security Sector Reform in Serbia" project.