Bosnia and Herzegovina
| Author | Robert Hanser, Nathan Moran |
| Pages | 225-230 |
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Official country name: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Capital: Sarajevo
Geographic description: Almost a landlocked country in southeastern Balkans; a narrow corridor extends to the Adriatic Sea
Population: 4,025,476 (est. 2005)
The situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is unique. This small nation, or better put, this small federation, is the product of military and social intervention from numerous outside entities. Having once been a part of Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina is now a war-torn nation being rebuilt into a democratic entity. In the process, its criminal justice system is being virtually created within the evolving governmental infrastructure. This civilian criminal justice system often works in conjunction with peace-keeping forces within the area. Due to the new establishment of this unstable nation and equally due to the inadequate nature of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian criminal justice system, much of this country's information is scarce or ill defined. Record keeping in this country is extremely new and lax. In mid-2005 numerous entities were involved in maintaining order and in creating both a government and criminal justice system. Thus, statistical facts and/or data were virtually nonexistent.
After four years of intensive conflict, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was finally brought to an end with what is commonly known as the Dayton Peace Accords in December 1995 (note that this occurred in Dayton, Ohio, in the United States of America). The international community, having invested so much in the peace process in this country, became intimately involved in implementing the accords as part of an unprecedented effort at postconflict peace-building. The goal was to prevent further warfare and to build a national infrastructure that could ensure lasting peace. This required cooperation between three warring factions—the Bosnian-Muslim forces, the Bosnian-Croat Croatian Defense Council, and the Bosnian-Serb Army—that had wracked the country with nonstop warfare. This ultimately resulted in the establishment of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation and the Republic of Srpska, which together form the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The United Nations (UN) implemented several programs of force restructuring to create a new professional police force. The UN created, as part of the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH), the International
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Police Task Force (IPTF) that, in turn, developed a three-point plan concentrating on: (1) restructuring a postcommunist and postparamilitary police force, (2) reforming the police through training, selection, certification, and decertification procedures, and (3) making a democratic police force by establishing a nonpolitical, impartial, and multiethnic police force that utilized principles of community policing.
As of 2005, the Bosnian police system, which is at best a loose term, was going through a transition period. Specifically, the NATO-led Implementation Force was being replaced with the European Union's own oversight personnel. In the midst of this external military policing from other countries, the Bosnian system was slowly developing as an organized civilian police force. Numerous agencies came together to provide assistance in the building of this civilian police force. Some of these were the U.S. Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), the European Union's Immigration Pact Team, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Office of the High Representative's Antifraud Department, and many others.
There are basically two entities (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Srpska) that maintain their own police forces under the control of their respective interior ministers. Authority over the police is further decentralized in the federation, with each of the ten cantons also possessing a ministry of the interior. While the Republic of Srpska police are merely subdivided geographically into regional public security centers and local police stations, the chiefs of which remain directly accountable to the Republic of Srpska's interior minister.
The limited policing power of the federation is reflected by the short list of policing tasks that fall within its purview: coordinating interentity and intercantonal cooperation (especially in regard to terrorism and other serious and organized crimes), protecting VIPs, and guarding diplomatic premises. The ten cantonal interior ministries are responsible for all other aspects of law enforcement, with each municipality having a police administration. In contrast, the Republic of Srpska maintains responsibility for all crime prevention and enforcement within its borders.
Bosnia's police forces suffer from several institutional weaknesses that stem from the country's wartime division, thus endowing it with a disorganized collection of authorities. Bosnia has fourteen separate police forces, and cooperation between these police forces is poor. Weak collaboration among the police, prosecutors, and judges also undermines the overall effectiveness of the criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to prosecuting the organizers of ethnic violence or making corrupt officials responsible for their acts. So long as policing structures remain flawed, providing for too much latitude at the local level and too little accountability to the center, international efforts to prevent corrupt political influences on the police will remain futile.
Besides its regular police forces, the federation also has separate...
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