Change and continuity – community service as an alternative to prison in Bosnia

A recent initiative, supported by the UK embassy* in Bosnia, has advanced the development of community service as an alternative to serving time in prison. The possibility was envisaged in a package of laws introduced under international supervision in 2003, but prior to the current initiative, there was no framework for delivery.

The focus of the initiative is to place those who might otherwise have received a sentence of up to one year in prison into workplaces which serve a recognised public good (utility firms or care work, for example). This follows recent developments in Serbia and Croatia, and is seen as part of aligning with practices elsewhere in Europe. Although a recent feature in these former Yugoslav states, it has a degree of resonance with old Yugoslav punishment practices.

In the workers’ society, the ‘sole corrective’ for the criminal lay in the reformative potential of labour. Marx’s claim in response to the workers of Gotha was reflected many years later in the Yugoslavian prison system. Large scale industrial and agricultural units were integrated into prisons, ensuring that the prisoners remained part of the workforce and part of society. Their work was conceived of as a form of therapy and social re-education.

But Bosnia today is far from the workers’ society and closer to the workless society. Here, there is massive unemployment, estimated at around 40%, but difficult to gauge due to the unknown size of the informal economy.

So, absent the logic of preparing workers for reintegration into the job market, what does the community service programme offer?

A fitting use of prisons

One of many possible logics of imprisonment is the containment of those offenders who pose a risk to society. How great the proportion of inmates that fall into this class is a matter for debate, but in a system such as Bosnia’s, without a well-developed set of alternatives, it is likely that imprisonment will extend beyond that core.

Harm reduction

If the rationale of containment does not apply, then the restrictive environment of the prison may not be the best way to achieve other objectives (punishing a wrong, working towards rehabilitation). Given a set of alternatives, and assuming that pure vengeance is not the motivating factor, it makes sense to choose the least harmful. A number of features of prison, including the separation from positive relationships with family and community members, the possibility of cultivating negative influences, and the psychological stress of living day to day in an unpredictable environment suggest that where alternatives exist, prison should be used most sparingly.

Reducing over-crowding

Harm can be reduced not only for those who are spared imprisonment, but those who are detained. By diverting some away from prison, the resources of the system are taxed less and might be used more effectively. A number of prisons in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the scheme has been developed, have chronic problems with overcrowding.

Reparation

The act of working for the community is an indirect way of offering reparation for a wrong, rebranded elsewhere and in different senses as ‘payback’.

Savings

Perhaps one of the most dramatic aspects of the presentation of the scheme is the financial data. Across more than 80 sentences, 325 months of imprisonment was converted into 2,450 days of community service, with a saving of roughly €475,000. Bearing in mind these results were mainly based on two cantons, the extension of the scheme would suggest far greater savings.

Limits to social work content

The team behind delivery and reporting recognised that the scheme is predominantly work-based, and has very little in terms of social work interventions with participants. Nonetheless, that kind of support is not something they would necessarily receive in the context of a short custodial sentence. Still, certain elements of the vision of the relationship between those sentenced to community service and those who organise and oversee their work suggests a supportive role as envisaged in criminal justice social work and probation services elsewhere.

On the whole, in the context of a struggling and overcrowded prison system, and a country with limited resources, finding alternatives that are less harmful and less expensive makes sense on a number of levels.

*Delivery and reporting on the scheme by LucidLinx, a Sarajevo-based consultancy firm. 

Bosnia’s Election 2014 – The Republika Srpska Presidency

This is the second entry on the October elections - looking back to 2012's municipal elections to see if they suggest change or stability. 

Republika Srpska, the entity occupying much of the north and east of Bosnia Herzegovina, has a system of government including a legislative assembly and a directly elected President. Presidential powers include the proposal of the head of government, the granting of pardons, and putting forward candidates for the Constitutional Court.

The election for President is on the basis of the largest share of the vote, with no necessity for a run-off should no candidate secure more than 50 per cent. In 2010, Milorad Dodik, head of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), secured 51 per cent of the vote, with an alliance of other parties securing 36%.

The SNSD had something of a breakthrough in 2006, securing the entity Presidency and becoming the largest party in the assembly, falling just short of an absolute majority. As well as securing the Presidency again in 2010, they more or less maintained their strength in the assembly.

There was a point when Dodik was seen as something of a great hope by the international community – a voice of moderation in Republika Srpska, with a history of opposing Karadžić’s Serb Democratic Party (SDS) during the war. When I was last here in 2005, he was seen to be something of a shrewd political opportunist, using his own role in blocking police reforms to gain the upper hand over the SDS. More recently concerns have been raised over his own nationalist rhetoric as well as anti-democratic tendencies.

A new opposition alliance

Regarding the upcoming election, the main Republika Srpska opposition parties have already indicated that they will unite behind one candidate for October. This includes: the SDS, whose programme presents a populist, nationalist, conservative party, grounded in Orthodox Christianity, and committed to the collective rights of the Serb people; Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), whose programme encompasses all citizens in Republika Srpska as well as pressing for equality for Serb citizens in Bosnia’s other entity; and a relatively new political force formed from existing parties the People’s Democratic Movement (NDP). The latter presents itself as based on a humanism and looks to neighbouring states’ integration into Europe as a path to peace and stability, but sets this against the ‘ever problematic and exotic orient’.

Based on the direct election of municipal leaders (načelnici) in 2012*, my estimate of these parties’ relative strength compared to the SNSD puts them 6 per cent ahead, with 45 per cent of the vote. However whether a united position of the three proves to be more or less than a sum of its parts remains to be seen.

*In these elections the parties frequently stand in locally-defined coalitions. To calculate each parties individual strength, coalition votes were divided among members according to their overall relative strength in all seats where they stood independently. 

The one-toothed police officer

Yesterday, I had the chance to catch up with someone I met on my way over here. He works in one of the traditional crafts that are still pursued in the old town district around Baščaršija, something that his father and grandfather did too. I like to think that at least one member of the family would have been there when my Fodor 1973 guide to Yugoslavia was being written – it describes the owners of the small shops sitting in the entrance way, making their wares as the crowds amble past.

There will be more stories to tell, I hope, from this chance encounter. The craftsman has had some interesting personal experiences that say something about Bosnia in the last 20 or so years. As (ok - if) my language skills improve, I hope to be able to do those justice. For now, much of what he said (what I understood him to say) about his hopes and his disillusionment chime with things I have been hearing elsewhere, so in coming posts, I want to cover some general themes from our conversation. Today, it's the police.

My direct experiences with the police here so far have broadly been positive: a couple of traffic stops conducted efficiently, professionally, and in a more or less friendly manner*. Ten years ago, I would have been less confident that this would have been the case, in 2004 a Transparency International survey found that 15 per cent of respondents had been asked to pay a bribe to the police. There is still an impression here that police enjoy a range of 'fringe benefits' from their position of power.

The 'one-toothed officer'

There is a strong contrast between the image of a modern capital city (symbolised in Sarajevo by the proliferation of new shopping centres) and the police officer with only one tooth in his or her mouth as described by the craftsman. The latter is certainly something of an exaggeration, but it sums up a view of a lack of professionalism, and the clear sense that many people are in positions only on account of a system of patronage. There is no other explanation for their presence. A friend here encountered this directly, losing out to a candidate 15 or so places further down in the rankings and below the minimal required competence for the job in question.

Lack of competence is one concern, but equally so is the lack of independence that goes with this patronage. In many ways there is a sense here that police will turn their eyes away from the wrongs of those in power, while simultaneously using the law as a tool to help those elites pursue their own goals. The 'over-policing' of the protests is one example of this, perhaps too the use of terrorism provisions in pursuing charges, but other examples around the plenums, and around citizens' attempts to use public space to maintain a dialogue on change come up regularly in conversation.

So, while there may be effective, professional, good police officers here, there is also a structure that creates pressure for partisan policing and that creates space for incompetent and sometimes corrupt policing. While this structure may have been modified by processes of political division, and the arrival of multi-party democracy, it builds on the features present in the (second) former Yugoslavia.

State and party

In the one party state, there is very little differentiation between the party (in this case, the League of Communists) and the apparatus of state (government, civil service, etc.). To hold key posts throughout the system (such as the Presidency of a local court) would require party membership. With democratic elections in November 1990, and the rise of the three main nationalist parties (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ; Party of Democratic Action, SDA; Serb Democratic Party, SDS), the strong link between party and state was not necessarily broken, it just fragmented somewhat.

Reading through case material that deals with the period from 1990 through to the middle of 1992, you can see that the shift in state-party relationship involves the new parties dividing up the offices among their own supporters. This was assisted by a system called 'the key' which was designed to achieve ethnic balance in a number of government-controlled posts, making sure that they matched the composition of the political unit (Republic, municipality). In municipalities where there was a division of power after democratic elections, that division often matched the ethnic composition of the area, and so there was a certain harmony between the objectives of the key and the party political appointments.

In such a system, the holders of offices owe their allegiance not to the state or to the people of that state, but to the partisan interests that put them there.

*More friendly when it was just a standard 'control' stop to check papers, less friendly when it was a ticking off for forgetting to drive with my headlights on, which is a legal requirement here.