Original scientific paper
Depoliticisation as Key Component of Police Reforms in Post-Socialist Countries: The Case of Croatia
Marko Prpić
orcid.org/0000-0001-9308-2102
; University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, Croatia
Abstract
In all post-socialist countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe, community policing is
expected to rebuild police legitimacy. The Croatian Community Policing Strategy, launched
in 2003, represented the continuation of reforms that were following the socio-political and
economic changes in the 1990s. The Croatian Community Policing Strategy originally
encompassed six projects. One of them, the Internal democratisation of the police, aimed at
adequate positioning of uniformed police, and achieving, in particular, a clear and transparent
promotion system, which also means depoliticisation of the police. The main goal of the paper
is to analyse the project results in relation to the overall police reform in Croatia and the level
of community policing implementation. The analysis included a representative sample of 500
Croatian police officers. Data were collected based on a questionnaire that included relevant
sets of indicators of the community policing implementation at the organisation level. The given
results show that almost two thirds (73.4%) of respondents perceive the depoliticisation of the
Croatian police as weak. Multivariate analysis reveals the differences in the level of overall
community policing evaluation in relation to the depoliticisation level.
Keywords
police reform, community policing, depoliticisation, police attitudes, Croatia.
Hrčak ID:
243819
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2020.
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