Prospects of the Public Order Protection Organization at the
Municipal Level in Russia
Vladimir V. Tkachenko
11
, Vasily V. Kolenichenko
12
, Roman E. Bogachev
23
and Natalya V. Zimovets
24
1
I.D. Putilin Belgorod Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, Belgorod, Russia
2
Belgorod State National Research University, Belgorod, Russia
Keywords: Protection of Public Order, Municipal Police, Prevention of Offenses, Security of Citizens, Local
Self-Government, Issues of Local Importance, Municipal Guard.
Abstract: In accordance with the current legislation, the functions of protecting public order are a priority for the State.
The creation of a municipal police or police at the municipal level is also complicated by the fact that so far
no normative legal acts regulating the legal status of the municipal police have been adopted. The article
analyzes the current legislation in the field of public order protection by local self-government bodies. The
article considers the foreign experience of the organization and functioning of the municipal police in terms
of the protection of public order and the solution of local issues. Both the positive aspects of the creation of
the municipal police service and the emerging difficulties in regulating public relations associated with its
creation are revealed. At the same time, there is already a positive experience of the municipal police in the
recent history of Russia. From a practical point of view, the experience of the city of Belgorod is interesting,
where the local authorities have created and successfully operate the Municipal State Institution “Municipal
Guard”.
1 INTRODUCTION
Among the objects of social management, the
protection of public order is very important, without
which the normal existence of civil society, as well as
the functioning of its social, economic, political,
cultural and other components, is impossible.
Undoubtedly, an insufficient level of ensuring public
order will have a negative impact on the sense of
security of both the individual citizen and the entire
society as a whole.
The reform process and repeated layoffs of police
officers in recent years have led to a massive shortage
of employees on the “ground”, that is, in the lowest
divisions of the territorial bodies of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs of Russia.
Currently, there is a rather large shortage of
personnel in the units involved in the protection of
1
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2769-5060
2
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0530-4049
3
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7627-8947
4
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2856-9365
public order: district police commissioners, patrol and
post police service.
At the same time, the grassroots units, especially
the departments of the district police commissioners,
are constantly burdened with non-core tasks, such as
supporting criminal cases, preparing decisions to
refuse to initiate criminal proceedings, patrolling the
streets during public events.
It should be noted that the municipal police is the
basis of the entire police system in a number of
foreign countries. Considering the foreign experience
in the formation of the police system, we see that
similar structures exist in such countries as Germany,
the United States, France and in a number of other
countries (Wolf, 2008; Feltes 2013; Walby, Lippert,
2012). The activities of these structures in these
countries are financed from the local budget and,
accordingly, they are managed by local authorities
(Donnelly, 2013; Guillamón, 2011). I would like to
816
Tkachenko, V., Kolenichenko, V., Bogachev, R. and Zimovets, N.
Prospects of the Public Order Protection Organization at the Municipal Level in Russia.
DOI: 10.5220/0010598108160821
In Proceedings of the International Scientific and Practical Conference on Sustainable Development of Regional Infrastructure (ISSDRI 2021), pages 816-821
ISBN: 978-989-758-519-7
Copyright
c
2021 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
note that the funding of local authorities in these
countries is much higher than in the Russian
Federation.
In France, in communes where the population is
less than 10 thousand people, the municipal police
operates, which maintains public order and public
safety, ensures the peace of citizens in a strictly
defined framework established by law. In this State,
the municipal police is the reserve of the National
Gendarmerie of France and the National Police in the
context of the implementation of the functions of the
criminal police, reports to the mayor and is
accordingly funded from the local budget. This
experience of the municipal police of the V Republic
could be used in the implementation of law
enforcement activities of the internal affairs bodies of
the Russian Federation, this is, first of all, a
competitive procedure for the formation of the
personnel component and detailed regulation of the
powers of officials performing the relevant functions
(Bolotina, 2006).
The main powers of the municipal police officers
are: prevention of offenses, identification of citizens,
video surveillance, inspection of citizens and
inspection of various objects. In the course of their
activities, they also have the right to apply a number
of coercive measures, such as physical force, special
means (Khusyainov, 2016; Kešetović, 2013).
In the experience of the development of the US
law enforcement system, you can find an example
when the local government itself “serves and
protects” by creating a special service of US sheriffs.
Sheriff an official elected by the population of the
district for 2-4 years, whose main responsibility is to
maintain law and order in the district entrusted to him.
As the head of the county police, the American sheriff
has fairly broad powers in the field of public order
protection: he arrests, brings offenders to court, and
is authorized to use weapons against them
(Golovanova, 2016; Wilson, 2003; Payne, 2004).
2 METHODOLOGIES
The creation of the municipal police in the Russian
Federation should lead to a further increase in the
active participation of citizens in the protection of
public order and ensuring public safety, as well as in
the provision of assistance to law enforcement
agencies in ensuring public order and public safety, in
the prevention and suppression of offenses.
In 2016, also by the deputies of the Duma faction
of the political party Fair Russia” was re-attempt to
create a municipal police force in the Russian
Federation by introducing a new bill number 385-7
“On the municipal police in the Russian Federation”,
as a result of this bill will be enacted from January 1,
2018 has proposed the creation of the standards with
The creation of the municipal police was proposed
to include in its composition such services as part of
the duty, patrol units for the execution of
administrative law, commissioners of municipal
police, as well as a number of other units that were to
perform the functions conferred upon a municipal
police Department in the proposed bill.
The adoption of this bill should have to be
subjected to significant changes, but rather to abolish
a number of units of the Ministry of internal Affairs
of the Russian Federation, in particular police unit
that performs the functions of protection of public
order and functionally performs the powers that were
supposed to be passed the municipal police
(Golubykh, 2017).
The adoption of a decision on the reorganization
of a number of divisions of the internal affairs bodies
and the transfer of their powers to the municipal
police is essentially a very serious step and should
have a significant argument, so it is not surprising that
this bill has not received support.
Undoubtedly, when developing this legislative
project, the authors did not take into account all the
difficulties that were expressed in the shortcomings
of this draft law, related to the sources and procedure
of funding, as well as in the technical support of the
activities of the municipal police, and the issues of
determining the service in this structure.
A number of Russian scientists in their scientific
publications have considered issues related to the
creation, organization and functioning of the
municipal police.
In his article on the draft law on municipal police,
R. A. Zhuravlev believes that for the creation of a
municipal police, first of all, a transition period of 2-
3 years is necessary, in which the legal, material,
technical, financial and organizational bases for the
functioning of the municipal police would be created
(Zhuravlev, 2017).
At the same time, at present, the need to create a
municipal police in Russia among scientists is
considered a fairly controversial topic.
In his research, I. V. Ivanko says that due to the
lack of material and legal prerequisites at the
necessary level, as well as due to the low
development of civil society, it is premature to talk
about the process of forming a workable, meeting all
the requirements of modern society, municipal police
(police) on the territory of the Russian Federation
(Ivanko, 2011).
Prospects of the Public Order Protection Organization at the Municipal Level in Russia
817
A number of authors believe that currently there
are not even the most necessary conditions for the
formation of municipal police in municipalities, local
self-government bodies cannot have the authority to
apply coercive measures – this should remain the
prerogative of federal law enforcement agencies.
However, local authorities should not stay away from
the protection of public order, since this function is
characterized by local government, full of self-
government is impossible without the ability to meet
the needs of the population in the proper social order
(Uporov, 2016).
M. Yu. Agrafonov believes that local self-
government bodies cannot manage the activities of
the municipal police for several reasons: the activities
of the municipal police will be underfunded, due to
the weak financial security of the local self-
government bodies themselves; local self-
government bodies are entrusted with a large number
of tasks related to the social sphere of society, and
therefore they are already heavily overloaded; local
self-government bodies are not essentially a structure
of state administration, and therefore they are not able
to control the activities of the new structure
(Agrafonov, 2015).
The opposite view has a M. A. Limonov, who
believes that the members of the municipal police will
assist the Ministry of internal Affairs of Russia of
great help in the protection of public order and
ensuring public safety on the streets and other public
places (Limonov, 2014).
Many problems of inter-confessional, inter-
territorial and extremist nature, according to D. M.
Gadzhiev, can be neutralized by using the potential of
the municipal police. In the course of its activities to
protect public order, the new structure will be able to
neutralize many criminal manifestations. Regional
criminological policy, as a tool for combating crime,
should be developed and improved (Gadzhiev, 2015).
There is a position that the functioning of the
municipal police with the provision of appropriate
administrative and legal powers will help to solve a
number of so-called “orphan” norms of
administrative responsibility at the municipal level,
which in turn will help to stabilize the process of
applying administrative legislation (Avdeiko,
Kononov, 2017).
Issues related to the creation and organization of
the municipal police were discussed in a number of
doctoral studies. In particular, A. M. Kononov comes
to the conclusion that the need for municipal bodies
to protect public order is due to the requirements of
the law and the need of society in such law
enforcement agencies. In his work, he proposes a
draft Federal law “On the basics of organizing
municipal public order protection bodies (Municipal
Guards) in the Russian Federation” (Kononov, 2000).
Exploring the implementation of the function of
protecting public order by the municipal police
(police) of foreign countries, P. N. Astapenko
emphasizes that the organization of municipal police
in foreign countries has a number of features that are
traditional and have developed as a result of a long
historical process of forming political and civil
institutions of society within the framework of state
and legal evolution. At the legislative level, local
authorities and their officials are entrusted with the
functions of ensuring public order and public
security, which are enshrined, including in the
constitution of the country (Astapenko, 2009).
In her scientific work, L. V. Gustova comes to the
conclusion that at the present stage of development of
Russia, the decentralization of police activity is
optimal, taking into account the following
fundamental provisions:
the municipal police must have an independent
status as a local government body;
there should be no duplication of powers
between the municipal police and the federal
executive authorities in the field of internal
affairs, their activities should complement each
other;
the financing of the activities of the municipal
police should be carried out at the expense of
the local budget, with possible partial
compensation of the costs from the federal
budget (Gustova, 2016).
Very interesting experience, Belgorod (Belgorod
region), where the local authorities created state
institution “Municipal guard” (hereinafter
“Municipal guard”), which is a non-profit
organization specifically authorized for the solution
of problems in the field of safety, disorderly conduct,
in cooperation with law enforcement authorities in the
city of Belgorod.
The founder of the “Municipal Guard” is the
municipal formation “City District” City of Belgorod.
In accordance with the approved charter, the
institution carries out its activities in the following
main areas:
together with other law enforcement agencies,
participates in measures to prevent terrorism
and extremism, as well as to minimize and
eliminate their consequences within the
borders of the city of Belgorod;
in the implementation of favorable conditions
for the creation and functioning of voluntary
public formations on the territory of the city,
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whose activities are aimed at protecting public
order;
in measures to monitor citizens’ compliance
with the rules of conduct in public places;
assistance to law enforcement officers in the
prevention and suppression of administrative
offenses, in matters of public order protection,
as well as the implementation of legal
propaganda for the residents of the city;
providing assistance, if necessary, to citizens
who are in a helpless state or in a state that is
dangerous to their life and health;
coordination of the activities of public
formations of citizens of law enforcement
orientation, providing them with
methodological assistance.
On the right of operational management, the
administration of the city of Belgorod was provided
with the necessary office premises of the “Municipal
Guard”. The maintenance of these premises,
including the payment of all operating costs and
utilities, is also carried out by the city administration.
The full-time number of employees of the
“Municipal Guard” is 196 people, of which 173 are in
the position of inspector for the protection of public
order.
The structure of the institution has six structural
divisions: the operational response headquarters, the
department for interaction with the Councils of
territories, three departments for work with law
enforcement agencies and the department for
interaction with the Belgorod Cossack Society.
The daily number of employees of the institution
involved in the protection of public order in the
territory of the regional center is from 70 to 90 people,
and in some cases during mass events in the territory
of the regional center exceeds 100 people.
The municipal guard assists military enlistment
offices in the registration of draft dodgers. In
addition, employees of the institution work with the
land department of the city administration to identify
unrecorded land, illegal development of land plots,
cooperate with the consumer market department
jointly check the places of illegal trade. When
identifying offenses, they contact the Department of
Internal Affairs on duty for territoriality and take
measures to prevent crimes (Polyakova, 2017).
Employees of the Municipal Guard take part in the
protection of public order together with police
officers in almost all mass events taking place on the
territory of the city of Belgorod. In addition to
working with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of
Russia in the city of Belgorod, the “Municipal Guard”
on the basis of concluded contracts carries out the
protection of objects belonging to enterprises and
organizations of various forms of ownership. The
squads of the “Municipal Guard”, consisting of the
number of inspectors, are included in the plan for the
integrated use of forces and means on the territory of
the city. This allows for extremely coordinated
interaction in the implementation of the protection of
public order and ensuring public safety on the
territory of the city of Belgorod.
3 RESULTS
In 2020, with the participation of employees of the
institution of the “Municipal Guard”, a total of 1,609
administrative offenses were detected. The most
common among them were: 281– disorderly conduct,
220 – violation of the anti-alcohol legislation, the 85
evasion from execution of administrative
punishment, 84 unauthorized occupation of the
land, 56 disturbances in the field of traffic, 50
failure to comply with administrative limitations and
failure to comply with obligations imposed under
administrative supervision.
Special attention is paid by the staff of the
“Municipal Guard” to the suppression of
administrative offenses provided for by the Law of
the Belgorod region of 04.07.2002 No. 35 “On
Administrative offenses in the territory of the
Belgorod region”.
In 2020 – 552 of such offense, including 276
violations of trade rules, 158 rules of landscaping,
gardening, maintenance of cleanliness and order on
the territory of urban and rural settlements, 81 –
statutory restrictions of Smoking tobacco, 31 rules
of the maintenance of non-residential premises, 6
cases of violations of citizens peace and quiet at night
were detected.
More than 600 preventive interviews were
conducted with citizens engaged in illegal trade.
Together with the inspectors of the “Belgorod
Parking Space”, in the reporting period of this year,
work was carried out to identify violations of the rules
in paid parking lots of the city, 212,782 photo-
recordings of cars were made.
4 DISCUSSIONS
Using the example of the activity of the Municipal
Guard in the city of Belgorod, it is possible to clearly
demonstrate the possibility of participation of local
self-government bodies in the protection of public
Prospects of the Public Order Protection Organization at the Municipal Level in Russia
819
order and the implementation of public security on
the territory of the municipality.
The creation and operation of the Municipal
Guard in Belgorod is a typical example of the direct
participation of local self-government bodies in the
implementation of the rights assigned to local self-
government that meets the constitutional ideals of
civil society. Moreover, the analysis of the activity of
this structure on the example of the city of Belgorod,
allows us to evaluate it as quite effective.
The study of problems related to the protection of
public order, which are faced in municipalities, is
important for the functioning and development of the
rule of law. The legal consolidation of the list of
powers of the municipal police, forms of interaction
with state and municipal bodies largely depends on a
particular model of the system of municipal law
enforcement agencies, as well as on national
characteristics, local traditions, political, socio-
economic and territorial characteristics. However, at
the same time, we can say that the creation of a
municipal police will solve such age-old problems as
alienation from the served population, information
vacuum and social control.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The general problems of local initiatives to organize
the protection of public order at the municipal level
include the following:
1. The instability of these organizations, the main
reason for which is the lack of a legal framework.
Initiators are forced to develop their own regulatory
decisions on the ground, legitimizing the activities of
employees of such structures, the competence of their
control, supervision and preventive work.
2. Responding to changes in the course of federal
and regional authorities. This can explain the transfer
of tasks to municipal structures that were not initially
set: the coordination of people's squads,
strengthening work in the field of anti-terrorist
activities.
3. The main interest of the municipal authorities
is to monitor compliance with the regional
administrative legislation and the rules of
improvement.
4. Overburdened tasks and the growth of
statistical reporting, creating the risk of growth of the
management apparatus.
5. The management and the main staff are made
up of former employees of the internal affairs bodies.
On the one hand, these structures attract people who
understand and know what public order protection
and crime prevention are. At the same time, it also
brings risks, the main of which is the reproduction of
the "stick system" and the dominance of the
repressive understanding of prevention, the lack of
desire for a comprehensive view of the prevention of
offenses.
Based on the above, it can be concluded that the
municipal bodies of public order protection created
by local self-government bodies are understood as
law enforcement units created and financed by them,
whose main task is to protect the interests of citizens
living in the territory of municipalities, as well as
society and the state from criminal and other
encroachments within their competence.
To achieve a positive effect as a result of the
creation of municipal police units on the territory of
the Russian Federation, in our opinion, it will be
possible if:
the powers of the employees of the municipal
police to ensure the protection of public order,
including those related to the prevention of
offenses committed by minors and against
minors, will be clearly defined;
defined procedural powers in the proceedings
in cases of administrative offenses, the
responsibility for which is provided for by the
legislation of the subjects of the Russian
Federation on administrative offenses;
defined at the legislative level, the full-time
number of employees, depending on the
number of people living in the territory of the
municipality and the state.
Among the difficulties in regulating public
relations associated with the creation of a municipal
police, one can distinguish:
lack of a legal framework in the form of a
federal law on the establishment of a municipal
police;
lack of a single algorithm for creating a
municipal police;
the process of financing the municipal police in
the context of foreign economic instability and
the sanctions imposed on the Russian
Federation;
ensuring the personal safety of the municipal
employee in the course of ensuring the
protection of public order.
Thus, the process of creating a municipal police
on the territory of the Russian Federation remains
controversial, and the issue of transferring law
enforcement functions from other law enforcement
agencies to the municipal police remains open, since
detailed study is needed related to the delineation of
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powers between state authorities and local self-
government bodies.
However, we still believe that the issue of creating
a municipal police in the Russian Federation has a
positive trend for its solution and we hope that in the
near future the employees of these bodies will take
part in the protection of public order throughout the
country. This will be possible only after the adoption
at the federal level of the relevant law, which will
regulate the current aspects of the activities and
organization of the municipal police service. As a
successful example of the functioning of the
municipal police, we can use the positive practical
experience of the administration of Belgorod on the
creation of the “Municipal Guard”.
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