Criminologists without Employment in the Police

The Serbian Ministry of Interior does not possess a systematic employment policy for the graduates of the Academy for Criminalistics and Police Studies, even though it uses millions of Euros to finance its work.

By Andrej Stefanović (BCSP) / Photo: Academy for Criminalistics and Police Studies

The Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Serbia (MoI) does not have a systematic and coherent employment policy towards the graduates of the Academy for Criminalistics and Police Studies (ACP), nor does it keep records of employees who have received their education at the ACP, it was underlined in the Centre for Social Innovation analysis.

The APC was formed in 2006 by the Serbian Government through merging two previous institutions – the Police Academy and the School for Internal Affairs. The Academy provides specialized knowledge in policing, criminalistics, forensics and IT. The functioning of the APC is financed by the MoI, and in 2015 it spent EUR 3.4 million, while in 2016 the figure stood at 2.3 million. Even though investing in the area of higher education is not explicitly stated as a strategic priority in MoI’s documents, it can be assumed that the goal is to improve police work through educating and training students at the APC who will one day be employed by the MoI.

Since the MoI is financing the functioning of the ACP, it is expected that the best, if not all, graduates are to be employed at the MoI. First, two generations of the ACP were even given the opportunity to sign contracts guaranteeing job positions at the MoI. However, this kind of practice was suspended afterward, and graduates of the APC only have the opportunity to apply for a job, without guarantees that they would ever be employed. This is why most of the graduates of the APC are unemployed, and even when they find work it is usually in other fields, and not in the police. Further on, the MoI does not possess a systematic overview of those graduates who did, in the end, find a job in the MoI, which additionally hampers acquiring precise data.

The performance of expenditure for financing the APC is additionally worsened due to the fact that the MoI hands out scholarships to the best-ranked students and the estimate is that only one such graduate costs the taxpayers EUR 20,000 during his or her education. Since the MoI does not employ these graduates and cash-in what it previously invested, it has to again invest in education and training for those people who it actually employs, since they do not come with adequate knowledge and skills. This kind of reckless behavior does not only cause great financial losses but also endangers the security of the society as a whole since the police do not possess the needed skills and expertise for addressing various contemporary security threats.

Since it is clear that this kind of a relationship between the MoI and the ACP is not sustainable, two alternatives are at hand. On the one hand, if it is concluded that the knowledge attained at the ACP is not useful in reality and that ACP graduates find it hard to perform everyday duties at the MoI, then the state financing of the ACP should be suspended, and other less expensive alternatives of educating future policemen and women should be sought. On the other hand, if it is acknowledged that the ACP is needed, the MoI should turn to creating a strategic framework which will determine the policy and the dynamics of employing ACP graduates.

This analysis was done as a part of the Pro-Cure network, which aims at strengthening the performance of public procurement in the security sector, as well as facilitating transparency and responsibility in public expenditure, through using the mechanism of civic monitoring.