Abstract
The modern (since 1991) Russian government has inherited the police machine as it was and due to tremendous political, economic, and ethnic turmoil, have not had enough time and resources to change it. After a couple of decades of dynamic and unpredictable changes in Russian society, it became obvious that the old Soviet type law enforcement system does not match the new semi-democratic realities of modern Russian society.
Policing is one of the social institutions that, despite numerous reforms and innovations, largely retain the Soviet structure, traditions, and techniques of work. Four important mechanisms of the modern police which allow us to fully consider the legacy of Soviet experience are (a) the prevalence of punitive-repressive functions, (b) the political dependence from authorities, (c) legal nihilism, and (d) the “cane” reporting system. For the last 20 years police have endured budget deficits and low wages. Legal imperfection of the current police legislation and its constant change lead to unfounded difficulties in day-to-day operation of the police, poor working conditions, overtime assignments, mediocre recruitment, and selection and training (Sociology of yesterday, today and tomorrow: The second sociological readings in memory Valery Borisovich, pp. 151–174, 2008b). The police force is the core element in the Russian criminal justice system and changes launched in 2009 will inevitably affect the nature of the activities of other parts of the criminal justice system in Russia: prosecution, courts, prisons, and other agencies.
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Sergevnin, V., Kovalyov, O. (2013). Policing in Russia. In: Meško, G., Fields, C., Lobnikar, B., Sotlar, A. (eds) Handbook on Policing in Central and Eastern Europe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6720-5_12
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