Citizen Control of the Police in Russia

• In Event: IASOC Presents: Evolving forms of Policing and Social Control in the Post-Soviet Region

Abstract

The proposed paper will explore one of the ways though which Russian society has been mobilizing against police violence and police misbehavior since the second half of the 2000s. It is well known that Russian police has been on the trial bench for many years. Growing public concern has been instrumental in the process of reforming the institution on the one hand, as a wide mobilization repertoire has developed. My paper will focus of one aspect of these mobilizations, the establishment of forms of civic control (obshchestvennyj kontrol’) over the police by analyzing the work of ONK (obshchestvennye nabliudatel’nye kommissii) as well as the work of some NGOs that got specialized in resorting to law to fight police arbitrary and other civic campaigns. Drawing from empirical research in several regions of the Russian Federation I will explore how these activities contribute to redefine citizens-police relations through mechanisms of substitution / cooperation / conflict and to what extent it is possible to understand them as an attempt to (re-)establishing control from the society against the deviance from a State institution.

Author

• Anne Le Huerou, Unversité Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense, CERCEC