Mobile groups – development issues

The creation of permanent mobile groups to monitor compliance with the constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen in the activities of internal affairs bodies has become a noticeable step in the realisation of the idea of public control over law enforcement agencies. Over the period 2006-2008, mobile groups carried out more than 500 visits. Despite more than three years of work by mobile groups at the all-Ukrainian level, the issue of summarising the experience of their activities remains quite relevant.
The coordinators of the two mobile groups – in Donetsk Oblast and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea – have made an attempt to summarise and analyse the experience gained. It is worth noting that it was these two groups that initiated the exchange visits. The idea of exchanging experience on the activities of these two mobile groups arose back in September 2007. Having considerable experience of monitoring visits behind them – over a hundred trips for the two mobile groups, of which more than a dozen were joint – these mobile groups have drawn certain conclusions regarding their two years of joint activity.
The first public discussion of their work took place in Kharkiv at the end of March at a meeting of assistants to the Minister regarding Human Rights and Internal Affairs. The presentation of the work provoked emotional, sometimes overly heated and quite subjective feedback. The authors made every effort to ensure that all valid comments were taken into account.
It is worth noting that the discussion of this work revealed quite a few ‘blind spots’ in the regulatory framework for the activities of mobile groups (see the article ‘Mobile groups in the Ministry of Internal Affairs: problems of ensuring operational efficiency’ on the website ‘Prison Portal’ (http://www.ukrprison.org.ua/index.php?id=1243311761)).
The publication collects typical violations discovered during the visits by members of the mobile groups in the activities of temporary detention facilities and city/district police departments. It contains over 70 recommendations for improving their work in the sphere of human rights compliance. Important conclusions and proposals are formulated in the summary of the work, many of which are being made public for the first time.
This publication may be useful not only for members of mobile groups and assistants to the Minister for Human Rights. The authors hope that police officers will also benefit from familiarising themselves with this summary of the experience of monitoring visits.
The authors intend to post the full text of the publication on the ‘Prison Portal’ website (www.ukrprison.org.ua) in the near future.