Legal status of police officers and professionalization of police

Abstract

Public administration reform and its professionalization represent one of the pre-conditions for the European Union accession. In order to provide efficient implementation and enforcement of EU policy, modern administrative structures need to be established. One of the main elements of the professionalization of administration is the improvement of the civil servants status. Professional, depolitized and efficient administration requires setting up the civil servants status in a new manner and enactment of new regulation in order to adopt and implement common European principles. This paper is focused to police officers status as a special category of civil servants who perform vital functions of public interest. Due to specific nature of police functions and its character, status of police officers is regulated in a specific manner which differs from the regulation on civil servants legal status in other state administration bodies in Serbia. Professionalization of police is an issue of high priority, regarding the importance of functions they perform like the human rights prevention and maintaining the peace in society. Therefore, police officers have to be highly qualified, trained, motivated and politically neutral in order to execute tasks efficiently. Analyzing the civil servants status in other state administration bodies in Serbia, we can identify some elements of their legal position, the institutes and modern human resource management principles which can be introduced in the police system and applied to the police officers status. The aim of the paper is to analyze and present the elements of the legal position of police officers and to point out to the similarities and differences between their status and other civil servants status. Furthermore, the paper is focused to modern European principles and human resource management practice in civil service. According to European standards, some principles and institutes have been adopted by domestic regulation such as introducing of an open and competitive selection and recruitment of candidates based on merit and transparent criteria, evaluation of performance based on determined performance criteria, promotion based on merit, established mechanisms of motivation and renumeration, permanent professional training, development of individual responsibilities, prevention of corruption, impartial performance. Although some of these institutes have been introduced by the regulation, mechanisms for the effective implementation need to be established. Therefore, one of the important tasks shall be capacity building of the Ministry of internal affairs, its reorganization, personal development and education of employees, introducing new institutes and working methods. Since civil service has to operate as an integrated system and since an efficient cooperation and coordination between the state administration bodies has to be established, capacity building of the Human Resource Management Unit in the Ministry of Internal Affairs is required as well as the coordination with central unit - Human Resource Management Office of the Government of Serbia and human resource management units in other ministries, in order to introduce common human resource management principles and develop modern and professional police.

Imajući u vidu specifičnu prirodu i karakter policijskih poslova, na pravni položaj policijskih službenika se primenjuje poseban pravni režim, koji se razlikuje od opšteg režima regulisanja statusa državnih službenika u drugim organima državne uprave. Specifični elementi statusa policijskih službenika su njihova prava i obaveze, odgovornost za obavljanje poslova, principi rada koji su definisani u skladu sa prirodom poslova, sistem zvanja, uslovi za prijem u radni odnos, sistem ocenjivanja i napredovanja, stručno usavršavanje, kao i sistem plata i naknada za rad. Navedene elemente razmatraćemo sa aspekta pozitivnopravnih rešenja i prakse, kao i usvojenih evropskih standarda i principa u cilju ukazivanja na savremene tendencije razvoja i profesionalizacije policije.