While Croatia might be perceived as another Eastern European country on the road towards a democratic society, its challenges and successes to date make its experience quite distinct and different. What are these? This study looks at the operation of the police force and asks how it has contributed to, and detracted from, the democratisation process. It suggests that a number of general lessons can be drawn from the Croatian experience of policing and corruption.
After the break-up of Yugoslavia, the expectation of war in Croatia put defence on top of the country’s priority list. Democratisation reforms that did not directly correlate with war-related efforts were sidelined for at least two years. The size of the police force is an illustrative example: the number of sworn officers first increased as a consequence of war-related activities, only to be dramatically reduced to a number that more closely corresponds to the European standards once the war-related activities subsided. The police are an integral part of a larger society and, as such, are strongly affected by the conditions in the society. The war in Croatia had an effect not only on the state of police recruitment, training, and supervision, norms of police culture, and the achievement of police accountability, but also on the availability of equipment and the size of the police budget.
Societal tolerance and acceptance of the corruption of public officials, including high-ranking officials of the ruling party, creates an atmosphere in which corruption is an integral part of the political system, economy, and public services.
- In a society in which corruption virtually becomes a way of life, police corruption is very likely unless there are intense efforts to curtail it.
- The democratisation of the police typically incorporates efforts to increase openness and public accountability.
- One way of measuring the success of becoming a more public-friendly police is through citizen surveys or public opinion polls.
- In Croatia however, the degree of public support for the police does not perfectly correlate with improvements in the democratisation of the police. A number of intervening variables may have had an impact on that relationship.
- According to public opinion polls, the level of support for the police was higher in the mid-1990s, when the effects of the war were stronger and omnipresent.
Establishing a relatively advanced set of legal boundaries for police work and behaviour is a crucial but insufficient condition for democratisation.
- The substantial intervention into the existing communist-inherited legal system was postponed for more than five years. One part of the legal framework involves the Croatian version of the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) rules.
- While unofficially used in everyday police work, they were declared unconstitutional and officially replaced with the old Yugoslav Regulations.
- This discrepancy between the official and unofficial rules probably contributed toward the extent of police misconduct.
- Even when the law is enacted and it actually provides adequate grounds for prosecution in cases of police corruption, the actual enforcement of the law could be substantially reduced or missing completely.
