THE INTERNET AS THE PUBLIC SQUARE OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

The starting point for any modern privacy analysis is no longer the printing press but the smartphone. The Court has repeatedly observed that the internet has become one of the principal means by which individuals exercise their right to freedom of expression, offering essential tools for participation in public debate and an unprecedented platform for ordinary people, not only journalists or politicians, to reach an audience. C.T., the author of the Facebook post at the heart of this case, was not a journalist, a blogger, or a public figure of any kind. She was, in the Court’s own words, a private individual with no expertise in the digital services field, who used her personal account to describe an encounter with the local police in the language of frustration rather than reportage. That she could do so, and that her post could reach tens of thousands of potential viewers within a Facebook group devoted to local affairs, is itself the story of the last two decades: the disappearance of any meaningful barrier between a private grievance and a public audience.

That disappearance cuts both ways, and the Court is candid about it. On one hand, the internet enhances the public’s access to information and its capacity to hold power to account, including the power exercised by police officers in their daily dealings with citizens. On the other hand, the risk of harm posed by online content is, in the Court’s assessment, genuinely higher than that posed by traditional media, because unlawful speech can spread worldwide in seconds and remain persistently retrievable long after it has ceased to serve any informational purpose. A single Facebook post accompanied by a photograph and a name is no longer a private complaint aired to a handful of neighbours; it is a document that can be shared, screenshotted, and resurfaced indefinitely. Any legal framework built for the age of the local newspaper has to be re-engineered for a medium in which the author, the publisher, and the commentariat are frequently the same undifferentiated crowd of private users.

THREE TIERS OF PROTECTION

It is against this backdrop that the Court’s case-law has settled into a recognisable, if not always precisely drawn, hierarchy of three categories of person, each attracting a different intensity of protection under Article 8 and a correspondingly different scope for permissible criticism under Article 10.

Private individuals sit at the top of the protective scale. A person unknown to the public may claim particular protection of the right to private life, and interference with that right, whether through the publication of a photograph, the disclosure of a name, or an accusation of wrongdoing, requires a correspondingly weighty justification. Nothing in this judgment disturbs that baseline; if anything, it is reaffirmed obliquely, because much of the Court’s reasoning about C.T. herself proceeds on the assumption that, as an ordinary private citizen posting about her own encounter with the authorities, her conduct was to be judged generously rather than held to the standard expected of a professional publisher.

Public figures occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. Politicians and others who have, through their own acts or position, entered the public arena and knowingly exposed themselves to scrutiny must display a correspondingly greater degree of tolerance for criticism, and the margin for restricting speech about them under Article 10 § 2 narrows accordingly. This is settled doctrine, and the Court has applied it consistently for decades in cases concerning elected officials, senior civil servants who have sought the public eye, and others whose position depends on public confidence secured through public engagement.

Between these two poles sits the category that this judgment does most to clarify: public servants acting in an official capacity, including police officers, and particularly officers at the lower end of the institutional hierarchy who have never sought public attention for themselves. The Romanian courts had treated the applicants, both ordinary local police officers, as public figures in the full sense, reasoning that this status alone justified the dismissal of their claim. The Strasbourg Court declined to go that far. It held expressly that ordinary police officers cannot be considered public figures in the same sense as politicians or other persons who have deliberately entered the public arena, so long as they have merely acted in their official capacity without seeking public attention. Nothing in the case file suggested that the two officers had sought publicity, either before or after the Facebook post; they were simply doing their jobs, and doing them in a public street, when a citizen decided to record and broadcast the encounter.

Yet the Court did not, for that reason, restore to the applicants the full protection enjoyed by an ordinary private citizen. It agreed with the domestic courts on a narrower but decisive point: precisely because the applicants were public servants acting in their official capacity, and because their profession depends on public trust and directly implicates the proper functioning of the State, they were subject to wider limits of acceptable criticism than ordinary individuals, even though they were not public figures. A certain degree of immoderation in the response to their conduct, the Court noted, falls within those limits, particularly where the criticism is a reaction to what is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as unjustified or unlawful behaviour by the officers themselves. The use of force by State agents, and allegations of police misconduct more generally, are treated by the Court as matters of significant public interest almost by definition, regardless of the rank of the officer involved or the modesty of the incident that gave rise to the complaint.

This produces a genuinely intermediate category, distinct in both directions. Low-ranking police officers are not stripped of privacy protection the way a senator or a minister effectively is; the Court was careful to note that circumstances can exist in which an officer’s individual interest in protecting his or her private life prevails, for instance where publication of a recognisable image is likely to cause specific adverse consequences in that officer’s private or family life, quite apart from any question of misconduct. But neither do they enjoy the presumption of anonymity and insulation from public comment that an ordinary bystander would. Their uniform, their public function, and the public interest inherent in how coercive state power is exercised on the street combine to lower, without eliminating, the threshold of protection.

THE INTERNET-SPECIFIC BALANCING EXERCISE

Having placed the applicants in this intermediate category, the Court applied its now-standard set of criteria: the contribution of the post to a debate of general interest; the degree of notoriety of the persons affected and their prior conduct; the circumstances in which the photograph was taken; and the content, form and consequences of the publication. But because the dispute arose entirely online and generated a wave of third-party comments, the Court also drew on criteria developed specifically for internet cases, most notably in Sanchez v. France: the status of the original poster, that person’s own responsibility for comments left by others, and the practical possibility of holding those other commentators liable directly.

Here the distinctions among private individuals, public figures and public servants interact with a second, equally important distinction, this time between the original author of online content and the anonymous or pseudonymous crowd that reacts to it. C.T. was not the administrator of the Facebook group, had no established capacity to moderate or delete the comments of others, and had expressly disassociated herself from the more offensive remarks posted beneath her own text. The Court considered that holding a private individual civilly liable for the defamatory excesses of strangers reacting to her post would risk a chilling effect on ordinary citizens’ willingness to raise matters of public concern online, and could push people acting in good faith toward self-censorship. At the same time, the officers themselves had not attempted to pursue the individual authors of the abusive comments directly, even though those authors were, in principle, identifiable and personally liable for their own statements. The lesson for anyone contemplating similar litigation is that the internet does not dissolve individual responsibility for speech; it distributes it, and claimants must generally aim their legal remedies at the actual author of a given statement rather than at the person who merely provided the occasion for the ensuing public reaction.

WHY THIS CASE MATTERS BEYOND ROMANIA

For police officers, prison staff, court officials and other public servants across Council of Europe member States, Toth and Crișan is a useful, if sobering, guide to what Article 8 will and will not do for them when their conduct is filmed, photographed or described by a member of the public and shared on social media. It confirms that they are not without recourse: a legal framework enabling defamation or tort claims must exist, and where a publication genuinely distorts an officer’s conduct or exposes that officer to consequences unrelated to the legitimate public interest in accountable policing, Article 8 remains available. But it also confirms that low institutional rank offers no shield of anonymity once an officer is performing a public function in a public place, and that criticism of police conduct, even conveyed with the exclamation marks and rough edges typical of a heated Facebook post, will ordinarily be treated as speech on a matter of public interest rather than a private attack requiring compensation.

For anyone advising clients, whether officers seeking redress or private citizens who have posted about their encounters with the police, on the interaction between privacy, reputation and online expression, the judgment offers a workable map of the terrain: private individuals at one end, entitled to robust protection; political and public figures at the other, expected to tolerate wide-ranging and sometimes intemperate criticism; and, in the middle, the public servant, uniformed and identifiable, whose privacy interest survives but is calibrated, deliberately and consistently, to the public trust that the position itself demands.

Toth and Crișan v. Romania

1.  The applicants complained of a violation of their right to respect for their private life and reputation because the domestic courts had allegedly failed to strike a fair balance between the competing interests at stake following an allegedly defamatory post uploaded by a private individual on Facebook. They relied on Article 8 of the Convention.

2.  Mr Zoltán-Ovidiu Toth (“the first applicant”) and Mr Alin Crișan (“the second applicant”) were born in 1982 and 1974, respectively, and live in Oradea.

3.  The applicants are police officers working for the Oradea local police force (Poliţia Locală Oradea).

4.  On 8 April 2016 the applicants fined C.T. and her mother for a minor offence in connection with the disposal of household waste and with the conduct that those two private individuals had displayed towards them. As indicated in the judgment of Oradea District Court (“the District Court”) C.T. had challenged the fine and the national courts had established that (i) she had deposited the household waste in an unauthorised location but she had not insulted the applicants and (ii) the applicants had behaved inappropriately towards C.T. In reaching these conclusions, the competent courts had relied on testimonial evidence and a forensic expert report submitted by C.T., which indicated that on the date of the incident she had sustained bodily injuries which had not required a medical treatment. According to evidence in the case-file, the national courts had reduced the fine imposed on C.T.

5.  On the same date (8 April 2016) C.T. used her personal Facebook account to post a text accompanied by the applicants’ photograph to the public Facebook group “Oradea is us”. The post read as follows:

“Today the local police have screwed up once again. I went downstairs holding my child in my arms to take him to the car and after five minutes my mother also innocently came downstairs with the household waste. She was unaware that each owner’s association has its own bins. I explained this to her and I told her to leave the bag with the household waste next to the bin where she was standing, intending to take it to our courtyard myself, obviously, after placing my child in the car. It was logical that I was not going to leave it in the middle of the road!!!!!! In the meantime, the local police showed up [and] they jumped on us as if they were on fire [arși]. I explained to them what the problem was, but, eager to start a scandal, they did not want to]understand!!!! ‘Mister Domnule, wait for five minutes while I put my child in the car, then I’ll come back to put the household waste where it should go!’ No, they wanted me to provide them with my ID immediately, to drop everything and to stand to attention!! They did not even identify themselves until the moment that I said I was calling 112 emergency services. We were terribly scared! They verbally assaulted and pushed us. They did not let my mother drive away in her car … it was terrifying! How can anyone behave like that with two]women and a child? Do they really have so little dignity and respect towards people????!!!!!!!!”

6.  In the photograph, the applicants were depicted standing next to one another dressed in their police uniforms, with the first applicant holding a pen, a notebook and a mobile phone in his hand. Some cars, buildings and an unidentified person could be seen in the background.

7.  C.T.’s post received ninety-two comments and was “liked” by around 160 people. According to the applicants, it was also shared seventy-three times. In their view, that meant that the post was viewed more than 100,000 times, given that each user had more than 200 “friends” and that the online group in question had more than 24,000 members.

8.  Some of the people who commented on the post and engaged in the ensuing discussion about the event reported by C.T. referred to the applicants and to local police officers in general in a disrespectful manner, using expressions such as “scumbags”, “impostors”, “idiots”, “stupid”, “hillbillies”, “di.ks amounting to nothing”, “uneducated”, “crazy” and “worthless simpletons”. One of the people said that he wished that he could meet “specimens” like the applicants “to wipe the arrogance off their faces” and that, if the “scumbags” had been beaten up, they would have called the emergency services. One person stated that the second applicant appeared in several YouTube videos committing abuses. Three other people said that they had been fined by the applicants, that they had witnessed the second applicant acting overzealously and been given a hard time by him even though he had been off duty at the time, or that they had seen him harass a less-abled woman. One person said that she knew the applicants personally and was surprised by the information in C.T.’s post.

9.  In one of her replies to the comments, C.T. disclosed the second applicant’s full name after she was asked about his identity. In another reply to a third-party comment effectively condoning the applicants’ alleged reactions to C.T.’s behaviour, she denied that her intention had been to defame the applicants.

10.  On 19 August 2016 and on an unspecified date, respectively, the relevant authorities discontinued the disciplinary and criminal proceedings brought either by C.T. or by her mother against the applicants in connection with the events of 8 April 2016, apparently for lack of sufficient evidence.

11.  On 14 February 2017 the applicants brought an action in tort against C.T., claiming 50,000 Romanian lei (RON) (11,111 euros (EUR)) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and asking the court to order her to publish an apology in local newspapers and on the page of the Facebook group “Oradea is us”. They complained that C.T.’s post had defamed them and had affected their reputation and image because it had spread information which distorted reality, disseminated their photograph and the second applicant’s full name publicly to a wide audience without their consent and instigated and generated offensive third-party comments and threats.

12.  C.T.’s allegations that they had verbally and physically assaulted her and her mother were untrue. In fact, it had been C.T. who had been aggressive towards them and it had been her mother who had insulted them and had almost injured them as she drove away in her car. Moreover, C.T. had denied that she had been physically assaulted and had refused to lodge a complaint against the applicants when she had been questioned in that connection by other police officers who had been dispatched to the scene after C.T.’s telephone call to the emergency services. Furthermore, because of C.T.’s actions, the applicants’ family and friends had questioned their professional conduct and behaviour towards women, and random individuals had stopped them on the street and questioned them about the alleged abuses committed by them. Their employer had also opened disciplinary proceedings against them.

13.  On 26 June 2017 the District Court dismissed the action in tort. It held that the applicants had standing to bring the proceedings against C.T. because she had posted their photograph and identified the second applicant by his full name. Nevertheless, it found that the conclusions of the national courts described in paragraph 4 above had a res judicata effect.

14.  Moreover, even though the post had generated some trivial third-party comments about the applicants, it had not harmed their image. In fact, when some of the third parties had started using potentially offensive expressions, C.T. had clearly stated that she had intended only to report on the event in dispute and not to offend anyone.

15.  The applicants appealed against the judgment and contested the District Court’s assessment of the case. They argued that their image had been harmed by the post and not by what had happened at the scene of the events of 8 April 2016. Accordingly, the findings of the courts during the proceedings brought by C.T. against the fine imposed on her had been irrelevant to the action in tort which they had brought against her. Moreover, the applicants reiterated the arguments they had raised before the District Court and pointed to the fact that the courts had upheld the fine imposed on C.T. and the fact that the disciplinary and criminal proceedings opened against them in respect of the alleged events reported by C.T. had been closed by the relevant authorities on the grounds that the evidence against the applicants had been contradictory. They lastly argued that C.T. could have foreseen the results of her actions and that, in accordance with the case-law of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, any statement posted on Facebook could have legal consequences.

16.  On 12 January 2018 the Bihor County Court (“the County Court”) dismissed the applicants’ appeal and upheld the District Court’s judgment. It held that the applicants should have been mindful of the context and place in which they were operating when they had fined C.T., and of the type of relationship that had existed between them and her at that time.

17.  Also, the post had not initiated a defamatory campaign against them. It had merely reported C.T.’s perception of the event in which she had been directly involved.

18.  The applicants appealed on points of law against the judgment and largely reiterated the arguments raised before the County Court.

19.  Moreover, they contended that none of the information posted on Facebook had been censored, even though C.T. could have deleted any insults or inappropriate images. She was not a journalist and neither she nor the courts could rely in her defence on the rules applicable to journalistic freedom of expression. She was a private individual and therefore was under an obligation to adjust her public speech accordingly. Her actions had exceeded the limits of her right to freedom of expression and had been a way of exercising revenge on the police.

20.  By a final judgment of 28 February 2019, the Oradea Court of Appeal (“the Court of Appeal”) dismissed the applicants’ appeal on points of law and upheld the County Court’s judgment. Referring to principles deriving from the Court’s case-law on freedom of expression and to the provisions of the Convention and the Civil Code concerning the right to freedom of expression and the right to respect for private life, reputation and image, the Court of Appeal held that the principles developed in the Court’s case-law in respect of journalistic or political speech were also applicable to the present case.

21.  It also held that the post had been a way for C.T. to publicly manifest her right to freedom of expression with the intent to bring her message to the attention of a large number of users of the Facebook group. However, her post had not exceeded the limits of the aforementioned right afforded to her. It had been prompted by, and was an expression of, her momentary dissatisfaction at the applicants’ conduct while they had been exercising their professional duties and it expressed her opinion about the manner in which they had accomplished those duties. It was also supported by a sufficient factual basis.

22.  C.T.’s right to use the social media network in question as a means of communication could not be contested. Similarly, she could not be held responsible for the potential consequences of the comments made by third parties following her post, because every individual was responsible only for his or her own statements – given that civil liability was personal – and the conditions for third-party liability had not been met in her case. Moreover, the information disseminated by her post had been accurate and had been reviewed with res judicata effect.

23.  The Court of Appeal held that the post did not include offensive content and that all the indecent expressions used in the comments had been posted by third parties. C.T. could not have banned third parties from writing defamatory comments on the social media website in question or deleted those comments, and the closure of the proceedings brought by her against the applicants could not engage her civil liability. Furthermore, the limits of acceptable criticism were wider in the applicants’ case than in cases concerning ordinary citizens because the applicants were employees of a public service and the proper functioning of the State itself was at stake. The fact that C.T. had also disseminated the applicants’ photograph and the second applicant’s name could not have affected them in any way, given that they were public persons and the photograph in question did not portray them in an undignified or indecent manner.

24.  The Court reiterates that while the essential object of Article 8 is to protect the individual against arbitrary interference by the public authorities, it does not merely compel the State to abstain from such interference: in addition to this negative undertaking, there may be positive obligations inherent in effective respect for private or family life. These obligations may involve the adoption of measures designed to secure respect for private life even in the sphere of the relations of individuals between themselves. The boundary between the State’s positive and negative obligations under Article 8 does not lend itself to precise definition; the applicable principles are, nonetheless, similar. In both contexts regard must be had to the fair balance that has to be struck between the relevant competing interests; and in both contexts the State enjoys a certain margin of appreciation (Von Hannover v. Germany (no. 2) [GC], nos.40660/08 and 60641/08, §§ 98-99; Țiriac, § 72).

25.  Article 10 of the Convention guarantees “everyone” the freedom to receive and impart information and ideas and no distinction is made according to the nature of the aim pursued or the role played by natural or legal persons in the exercise of that freedom. It applies not only to the content of information but also to the means of dissemination, since any restriction imposed on such means necessarily interferes with the right to receive and impart information. Likewise, Article 10 guarantees not only the right to impart information but also the right of the public to receive it (Cengiz and Others v. Turkey, nos. 48226/10 and 14027/11, § 56).

26.  Article 10 does not, however, guarantee a wholly unrestricted freedom of expression even in respect of coverage of matters of serious public concern (Monica Macovei v. Romania, no. 53028/14, § 80). Any person who exercises freedom of expression (i) undertakes “duties and responsibilities” the scope of which depends on his or her situation and the technical means used (Gîrleanu v. Romania, no. 50376/09, § 92) and (ii) must not overstep certain limits, particularly with regard to respect for the reputation and the rights of others (Sanchez, § 149). The Court has therefore accepted that, in principle, any natural or legal person may be made the subject of various forms and degrees of individual or shared liability for defamatory or other types of unlawful speech in order to remedy effectively violations of personality rights (Delfi AS v. Estonia [GC], no. 64569/09, § 110; Sanchez, §§ 162-66, 183-85, 190, 192‑93, 201, 204).

27.  Where the complaint raised before the Court is that rights protected under Article 8 have been breached as a consequence of the exercise by others of their right to freedom of expression, due regard should be had, when applying Article 8, to the requirements of Article 10 of the Convention (Țiriac, § 73), bearing in mind that as a matter of principle the rights guaranteed by Article 8 and Article 10 deserve equal respect and the outcome of an application should not, in principle, vary according to whether it has been lodged with the Court under Article 8 or Article 10 of the Convention (Von Hannover, § 106, and Axel Springer AG, § 87).

28.  Relevant criteria for balancing the right to respect for private life against the right to freedom of expression include the contribution to a debate of public interest; the degree of notoriety of the person affected; the prior conduct of the person concerned; the circumstances in which a photograph was taken; and the content, form and consequences of the publication (Von Hannover, §§ 109‑113; Hájovský v. Slovakia, no. 7796/16, § 30).

29.  In cases such as the instant case where the information was disseminated on the internet and generated third-party comments, certain other criteria may be relevant for the outcome of the balancing exercise and may therefore need to be taken into account. They include the status of the alleged perpetrator, his or her specific liability for the third parties’ comments, the steps taken by him or her in relation to those comments and the possibility of holding the authors of those comments liable instead (Sanchez, §§ 179, 180, 190, 202).

30.  In this connection the Court is also mindful of the fact that the internet has become one of the principal means by which individuals exercise their right to freedom of expression. It provides essential tools for participation in activities and discussions concerning political issues and issues of general interest (Vladimir Kharitonov v. Russia, no. 10795/14, § 33; Sanchez, § 158). In the light of its accessibility and its capacity to store and communicate vast amounts of information, the internet plays an important role in enhancing the public’s access to news and facilitating the dissemination of information in general (Times Newspapers Ltd v. the United Kingdom (nos. 1 and 2), nos. 3002/03 and 23676/03, § 27). User-generated expressive activity on the internet provides an unprecedented platform for the exercise of freedom of expression (Delfi AS, § 110).

31.  The Court finds relevant, nevertheless, that the risk of harm posed by content and communications on the internet to the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and freedoms is certainly higher than that posed by the press, since unlawful speech, including hate speech and speech inciting violence, can be disseminated as never before, worldwide, in a matter of seconds, and sometimes remain persistently available online (Delfi AS, §§ 110 and 133).

32.  Moreover, although freedom of expression includes the publication of photographs, this is nonetheless an area in which the protection of the rights and reputation of others takes on particular importance, as the photographs may contain very personal or even intimate information about an individual and his or her family. In the cases in which the Court has had to balance the protection of private life against freedom of expression, it has always stressed the contribution made by photographs or articles in the press to a debate of general interest. Nevertheless, it has made a distinction between reporting facts – even controversial ones – capable of contributing to a debate in a democratic society, and reporting details of the private life of an individual who does not exercise official functions (Hájovský, § 31). Where the situation does not come within the sphere of any political or public debate and published photographs and accompanying commentaries relate exclusively to details of the person’s private life with the sole purpose of satisfying the curiosity of a particular readership, freedom of expression calls for a narrower interpretation (Hájovský, § 31).

33.  Lastly, the Court reiterates that in exercising its supervisory function, its task is not to take the place of the national courts but rather to review, in the light of the case as a whole, whether the decisions they have taken pursuant to their power of appreciation are compatible with the provisions of the Convention relied on (Axel Springer AG, § 86). Where the balancing exercise between the rights protected by Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention has been undertaken by the national authorities in conformity with the criteria laid down in the Court’s case-law, the Court would require strong reasons to substitute its view for that of the domestic courts (Axel Springer AG, § 88).

34.  The Court notes that the applicants blamed C.T. for publicly disseminating their photograph and the second applicant’s full name to a wide audience on Facebook without their consent, while at the same time making untruthful remarks suggesting that the applicants had verbally and physically assaulted her and her mother, thus attracting offensive third-party comments.

35.  The applicants appear to have accepted that the national authorities had put in place a legal framework capable of providing adequate protection against the alleged violation of their right to respect for their private life and reputation arising from the above-mentioned circumstances. Indeed, they were able to bring an action in tort against C.T. to claim compensation.

36.  The domestic courts examined the circumstances in which C.T.’s statements had been made and whether her liability was engaged. Nevertheless, the applicants disagreed with their decision. The Court must therefore review whether the national courts struck a fair balance between the competing rights at stake in conformity with the criteria laid down in its case‑law.

37.  The Court reiterates that there is little scope under Article 10 § 2 of the Convention for restrictions on political speech or on debate on matters of public interest. The margin of appreciation of States is thus reduced where a debate on a matter of public interest is concerned (Satakunnan Markkinapörssi Oy and Satamedia Oy v. Finland [GC], no. 931/13, § 167).

38.  The national courts found that C.T.’s post intended to bring to the attention of the Facebook group “Oradea is us” her position about a matter which ultimately raised questions about the proper functioning of the State, namely the allegedly abusive and violent manner in which the applicants conducted themselves as local police officers while carrying out their professional obligations. Given that in working as law-enforcement officials the applicants constantly engaged in public activities and were bound by a duty to serve and protect, and that their profession was ultimately one which involved public trust, the public had a right to be informed about any possible abusive conduct on their part.

39.  Indeed, the Court has acknowledged that the use of force by State agents, particularly where it relates to allegations of police brutality or misconduct, was inherently a matter of significant public interest (Dyundin v. Russia, no. 37406/03, § 33; Bild GmbH & Co. KG v. Germany, no. 9602/18, §§ 32-33).

40.  C.T.’s post therefore concerned a matter of public concern, and the Court sees no reason to doubt that it was capable of contributing to a debate of general interest on the moral and professional integrity of local police officers and the proper functioning of certain public services.

41.  The Court reiterates that whilst a private individual unknown to the public may claim particular protection of his or her right to private life, the same is not true of political or public figures in respect of whom the limits of critical comment are wider, as they are inevitably and knowingly exposed to public scrutiny and must therefore display a greater degree of tolerance (Monica Macovei, § 79).

42.  It cannot be said, however, that public servants knowingly lay themselves open to close scrutiny of their every word and deed to the extent to which politicians do and should therefore be treated on an equal footing with the latter when it comes to criticism of their actions (Stancu and Others v. Romania, no. 22953/16, § 116; Bild GmbH & Co. KG, § 33). Public servants must enjoy public confidence in conditions free of undue perturbation if they are to be successful in performing their tasks and it may therefore prove necessary to protect them from offensive, abusive or defamatory attacks or unfounded accusations when on duty (Chernysheva v. Russia (dec.), no. 77062/01; Stancu and Others, § 115). Nonetheless, public servants acting in an official capacity are subject to wider limits of acceptable criticism than ordinary citizens (Mamère v. France, no. 12697/03, § 27). A certain degree of immoderation may fall within those limits (Chkhartishvili v. Georgia, no. 31349/20, § 56), particularly where it involves a reaction to what is perceived as unjustified or unlawful conduct on the part of public servants (Savva Terentyev v. Russia, no. 10692/09, § 75).

43.  The Government have pointed out, and the applicants have not argued otherwise, that they had not denied in their submissions before the national courts that they were public persons. Moreover, the courts (i) held that the applicants were public persons and (ii) acknowledged that the limits of acceptable criticism were wider in their case, essentially because they were public servants.

44.  As regards the applicants’ status as public persons, the Court notes that it has found in the specific case of ordinary police officers that they could not be considered public figures in the same sense as politicians or any other persons who, through their acts or their position, have entered the public arena, as long as the officers had merely acted in their official capacity, without seeking public attention (Bild GmbH & Co. KG, § 32).

45.  In the applicants’ case, none of the available evidence suggests that they sought to be in the public eye or to receive public attention either before or after C.T. posted her message. It is true that by virtue of their professional activity the applicants seem to have interacted with and been known by some members of the online group “Oradea is us” at the time C.T. posted her message. However, the national courts did not give any weight to this evidence or to the applicants’ prior conduct in the light of their involvement in previous public activities. The evidence and conduct in question did not therefore have any consequences for the courts’ conclusion that the applicants were public persons or for the outcome of the balancing exercise conducted by them with regard to the competing rights at stake (Fuchsmann v. Germany, no. 71233/13, § 49).

46.  Furthermore, there is nothing in the case-file to suggest that in the applicants’ case the above-mentioned public exposure and attention exceeded a level that the activity conducted by an ordinary public servant acting in his or her official capacity in general or a police officer in particular could reasonably be expected to generate. It cannot therefore be said that the applicants could be considered on that basis to be public figures in the sense described in paragraph 44 above or even well‑known figures in their professional field for that matter (Petrie v. Italy, no. 25322/12, § 51; Stroea v. Romania [Committee], no. 76969/11, § 32).

47.  As to the level of criticism acceptable in the applicants’ case, the Court notes that they acknowledged that they were public servants. Even though none of the evidence suggests that they were high-ranking public servants or that they had applied for or occupied positions of particular public concern within the police force (Medžlis Islamske Zajednice Brčko and Others v. Bosnia and Herzegovina [GC], no. 17224/11, § 98; Stancu and Others, §§ 127-29), they never denied that they were acting in their official capacity at the time of the events in issue.

48.  Accordingly, the Court agrees with the national courts that the applicants belonged to a group of persons who could not claim protection of their right to respect for their private life in the same way as ordinary individuals and were therefore subject to wider limits of acceptable criticism than such individuals (Stancu and Others, § 129).

49.  The Court notes that it is undisputed by the parties that the applicants were neither asked for nor gave consent for their photograph, or names for that matter, to be disseminated on Facebook by C.T. Nor did C.T. take any steps to conceal the applicants’ faces before posting their photograph.

50.  It reiterates that the publication of a photograph must in general be considered to constitute a more substantial interference with the right to respect for private life than the mere communication of the person’s name (Vučina v. Croatia (dec.), no. 58955/13, § 46). It further observes that, whereas there is no general rule under Article 8 of the Convention requiring that police officers should generally not be recognisable in press publications, there may be circumstances in which the interest of the individual officer in the protection of his or her private life prevails. This would be the case, for example, if publication of the image of a recognisable officer, irrespective of any misconduct, is likely to lead to specific adverse consequences in his or her private or family life (Bild GmbH & Co. KG, § 35).

51.  The national courts found that the fact that C.T. had disseminated the photograph and the name in question could not have affected the applicants, given that they were public persons and that the photograph did not portray them in an undignified or indecent manner.

52.  The Court observes that while it has disagreed with the national courts that the applicants could be considered public persons, it has nevertheless accepted their view that the applicants could not have the same expectation of privacy as an ordinary individual in the specific circumstances of their case.

53.  The Court further observes that it is uncontested that the applicants’ photograph was taken on a public street, while the applicants were fining C.T. which had prompted a call by C.T. to the emergency services and the dispatch of a second police unit to the scene, and had obviously attracted some public attention. The photograph showed the applicants dressed in their police uniforms, while performing their duties as law-enforcement agents.

54.  The national courts did not find – and in any event there is nothing in the case file to suggest otherwise – that the photograph in question or the second applicant’s name had been taken covertly, using illicit means or subterfuge or taking advantage of any type of vulnerable position (contrast Egeland and Hanseid v. Norway, no. 34438/04, § 61). Thus, the Court agrees with the opinion of the County Court that the applicants should have been mindful of the public context underlying their interaction with C.T. and considers that they could not have excluded that they could be photographed, given their status and alleged conduct (Vučina, § 35).

55.  The Court also observes, as did the national courts, that the photograph was not taken in circumstances showing the applicants in an unfavourable light and that it did not present them in a manner which could have undermined their public standing from the reader’s perspective or show a distorted image of them. Judging from the manner in which it was used, the Court considers that the photograph was taken merely to lend support to the content of C.T.’s comments discussing a matter of public concern and illustrating the veracity of some of the information contained therein (compare, mutatis mutandis, Couderc and Hachette Filipacchi Associés, § 135).

56.  Thus, in so far as the manner in which the photograph was obtained does not raise any issue under Article 8, the mere communication of the second applicant’s name next to the photograph, without any negative connotations associated with that name and/or the distortion of the photograph, cannot be considered a particularly substantial interference with the right to respect for private life (Vučina, § 46).

57.  The national courts did not expressly give any weight to the fact that C.T. had posted the applicants’ photograph and the second applicant’s name without concealing their faces or obtaining their consent. Even though the Court has found that such measures may be relevant when balancing competing rights at stake in cases such as the present one, these factors form only part of the overall criteria that may be taken into account for the balancing exercise in question, including the content of the coverage and its consequences for the person concerned (Bild GmbH & Co. KG, § 35).

58.  As to the subject of C.T.’s post, the Court notes, as did the national courts, that it exclusively concerned the applicants’ professional activities and conduct in a public context, without mentioning any details of their private life (Sabou and Pircalab v. Romania, no. 46572/99, § 39).

59.  Moreover, they did not find that the post contained offensive, indecent or degrading content in relation to the applicants. Furthermore, the courts were of the view that the post expressed C.T.’s dissatisfaction at the applicants’ conduct and her opinion about an event in which she had been involved. Whereas they did not attach any weight to the fact that the disciplinary and criminal proceedings opened against the applicants had been closed, they relied on the findings in the proceedings brought by C.T. to challenge the fine to establish that the information disseminated by C.T. was accurate. Indeed, they found that C.T.’s comments and conduct were supported by a sufficient factual basis and that there was no indication that the dissemination of the applicants’ photographs and of the second applicant’s name had had any negative consequences for them.

60.  While the courts agreed with the applicants’ arguments to the effect that some of the third-party comments were indecent and defamatory, they found that C.T. could not be held responsible for the potential consequences of those comments because every individual was responsible only for his or her own statements and the conditions for third-party liability were not met in her case. Furthermore, C.T. could not have banned the third parties from writing such comments; nor could she have removed them.

61.  Having regard to the information in the case file, the Court finds no reason to disagree with the domestic courts’ assessment. It notes that C.T.’s post taken as a whole conveyed nothing more than her critical impressions of the manner in which the applicants had acted in their professional capacity. It also did not contain any personal insults or disparaging remarks or any unsubstantiated allegations, regardless of whether her comments could be viewed as constituting value judgments or statements of fact.

62.  In this context, even though some of her statements alleged unlawful actions by the applicants and she could have foreseen the possibility that the public would react to them (Sanchez, § 193), no evidence was adduced that C.T. did not act in good faith when posting her comments and the applicants’ photograph and disseminating the second applicant’s name or has sought only to gratuitously stir the public’s emotions and portray the applicants in a negative light.

63.  The Court finds relevant in this connection that C.T. and her mother also used both criminal and administrative remedies to bring their grievances against the applicants to the direct attention of the relevant authorities. Moreover, C.T. disclosed the second applicant’s full name only in one of her replies to a third-party comment on the post and only after she was asked expressly about the applicants’ identity. Furthermore, she appears to have sought to distance herself from the offensive third-party comments by expressly stating that she had not intended to defame anyone through her actions.

64.  The fact that the form and manner in which C.T.’s post was written and that some of the expressions contained therein were provocative and could attract the public’s attention cannot in itself raise an issue under the Court’s case-law (Axel Springer AG, §§ 81, 108). As acknowledged above, persons reacting to what is perceived as unjustified or unlawful conduct on the part of public servants are allowed to have recourse to a degree of exaggeration or even provocation, or in other words to make somewhat immoderate statements.

65.  Turning to the question of the consequences of C.T.’s post for the applicants, the Court observes that even though, as essentially acknowledged by the national courts, it was disseminated on a publicly accessible online platform without any apparent restrictions, it seems to have drawn very little actual public attention or provoked much of a reaction. Indeed, while the Government have not contested as such the applicants’ allegation that the post had quite likely generated more than 100,000 views, the Court notes that it was actually commented on and “liked” by a very low number of people overall.

66.  The Court also observes in this connection that, at the time of the events under examination, C.T. was a private individual who did not possess any expertise in the digital services field (contrast Sanchez, § 180). Furthermore, she did not disseminate her post during an electoral campaign or in any kind of tense political or social climate and was not a journalist, a politician, a well-known blogger or a popular user of social media, let alone a public or influential figure, a fact which could have attracted further public attention to her comments and therefore enhanced the potential impact of her statements (contrast Sanchez, §§ 176, 180, 187, 201). In addition, the applicants themselves acknowledged that C.T.’s post would have received maximum attention only immediately after it was uploaded and its visibility, impact and consequences could only have decreased significantly over time. They did not ask the national courts to order the removal of the post either while the proceedings were pending or subsequently. Given the circumstances, the Court considers that the potential of C.T.’s post to actually reach a wide segment of the public, either at the time of its publication or at a later date, was limited.

67.  There can be no doubt that the expressions used by some of the third parties in their comments were insulting and defamatory. Nevertheless, the Court observes that nothing in the case-file suggests that C.T. sought to invite or endorse the use of the offending expressions by those third parties. Moreover, the applicants have not brought forth any convincing evidence that C.T. was the administrator of the Facebook group to which she had uploaded her post or that she had the power to control the content of the messages posted by the other members of the group, or that could generally contradict the national courts’ findings and show that C.T. had failed to comply with any duties that could reasonably have been expected of her, as a mere private individual of no notoriety or representativeness, in terms of intervening efficiently on social media platforms (compare and contrast Sanchez, §§ 185, 190, 199 and 201) without running the risk of self-censorship (Sanchez, § 184).

68.  The Court further observes that the offending expressions used by the third parties were little more than “vulgar abuse” of a kind – albeit belonging to a low register of style – which is common in communication on many internet portals and that this consideration reduces the impact that can be attributed to those expressions (Magyar Tartalomszolgáltatók Egyesülete and Index.hu Zrt v. Hungary, no. 22947/13, § 77). Moreover, all of the comments in question would, in the context in which they were written, most likely be understood by readers as conjecture which should not be taken seriously (see, mutatis mutandis, Tamiz v. the United Kingdom (dec.), no. 3877/14, § 81).

69.  The Court is also mindful in this connection that the third-party comments, albeit made publicly, were directed at police officers who arguably must have been trained in how to handle such conduct (Chkhartishvili, § 57). There is no evidence in the case file, however, that the applicants even attempted to bring to justice at least some of the authors of those comments. The Court finds relevant in this connection that the acts of which C.T. was accused by the applicants were clearly distinct from those committed by the authors of the unlawful comments and that the applicants have not pointed to any specific difficulties that they might have faced in identifying the authors of those comments (Sanchez, §§ 202-03). Thus, the attribution of liability by the courts to C.T. alone for both the post itself and the content of the third-party comments, even in the context of civil-law proceedings such as the ones envisaged in the present case, could have had a chilling effect on freedom of expression on the internet and could have been particularly detrimental for private individuals who are acting in good faith and trying to raise awareness about matters of general concern (Sanchez, § 205).

70.  At the same time, the Court is unable to discern any concrete negative impact of C.T.’s post on the applicants’ private and professional life given that, as indicated by the applicants, both the disciplinary and criminal investigations opened in respect of them were discontinued. Moreover, it appears that C.T.’s post also prompted positive third-party comments about the manner in which they had performed their duties.

71.  Even assuming that the applicants’ allegations that strangers or family and friends had questioned them about their conduct may be true and that C.T.’s post and the subsequent third-party comments might be expected to have affected them to some extent, the Court has serious doubts that those consequences were sufficiently serious to override the public’s interest in receiving the information disseminated by C.T. (Țiriac, § 98).

72.  In the light of the above, the Court considers that the national courts conducted the required thorough balancing exercise between the competing rights at stake in conformity with the criteria laid down in the Court’s case‑law. Having regard to the margin of appreciation available to the national authorities when weighing up divergent interests, the Court sees no strong reasons to substitute its view for that of the domestic courts. It cannot therefore be said that by dismissing the applicants’ claim, the courts failed to comply with the positive obligations incumbent on the national authorities to protect the applicants’ right to respect for their private life under Article 8 of the Convention. There has accordingly been no violation of that provision.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT, UNANIMOUSLY,

1. Declares the application admissible;

2. Holds that there has been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention.

The applicants in the case – 47 Serbian citizens – took part in this peaceful gathering. At around 7 p.m., at the moment when the participants were observing a fifteen-minute silence in memory of the victims, the crowd was suddenly struck by a powerful sound wave. According to the applicants’ own accounts, they experienced sudden instinctive fear, panic, shock, accelerated heartbeat, trembling, hearing problems, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia and similar symptoms. Some sustained bodily injuries as a result of the panic-induced crush. Witnesses described how it all began like a human “avalanche”: people ran, fell and screamed without understanding what was happening; the sound resembled the roar of an approaching aircraft or train. Up to four thousand people reported a similar experience, and many of them sought medical assistance in the following days because of persisting symptoms.

The authorities’ response was markedly one of denial. The Minister of Internal Affairs initially stated that the ministry possessed no sonic cannon or similar weapon, but later confirmed that the police owned acoustic systems (in particular the LRAD 100X and LRAD 450XL), acquired in 2021, while maintaining that they had never been used because they are regarded as unlawful weapons under Serbian law. The Serbian Law on the Police does not provide for the use of any kind of sonic or acoustic weapon – that is, there is a legal vacuum in which any use of such a weapon would be ultra vires. Activists submitted to the United Nations office in Belgrade a petition signed by more than half a million people, demanding an international investigation. The authorities, by contrast, turned for assistance to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. The published FSB report concluded that acoustic devices had not been used and advanced the theory of a “staged provocation” with movements synchronised via smartphones; independent experts criticised this report as failing to meet the formal requirements for documents of this kind, lacking methodology and an evidentiary basis, and more closely resembling propaganda.

In April 2025, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights carried out a mission to Serbia, focused on policing during the demonstrations and on the working conditions of civil society and human rights defenders. He stressed the critical importance of preserving the principles of democratic policing for the safety of all citizens and warned the authorities against stigmatising protesters through discourse that falsely portrays the protests as a “colour revolution”. The Commissioner also expressed concern about the unfavourable environment for non-governmental organisations and human rights defenders, aggravated by reports of the use of spyware against human rights defenders and journalists, stigmatisation campaigns and leaks of personal data.

THE NATURE OF SONIC WEAPONS AND THE PARALLEL WITH “HAVANA SYNDROME”

Acoustic (sonic) weapons operate through the propagation of sound – pressure oscillations travelling through an elastic medium (in particular air) – directed at striking a target. Most such devices are based on ultrasound, low frequencies or infrasound emitted at high intensity levels. So-called “long-range acoustic devices” (LRADs, or “sound cannons”) emit, instead of bullets, sound waves of extreme loudness. Ordinary sound weakens with distance, yet the acoustic signal of such a device can be heard loudly at distances of up to a kilometre, because the waves are emitted under high pressure. The impact of such a wave on the eardrum is capable of causing significant physical injury, but no less important is the psychological harm of an “invisible attack”. Despite the labelling of such means as “non-lethal” or “less lethal”, they are open to the same objections as other technologies bearing this label, and their use together with kinetic means in fact increases the risk of death. In international law, acoustic weapons have no authoritative definition and are not regulated, nor are they the subject of dedicated multilateral policy discussions.

This phenomenon is usefully considered in connection with the so-called “Havana syndrome” – a set of unexplained health disorders (headache, nausea, balance disturbances, auditory and cognitive symptoms) attributed to the possible effect of acoustic or directed-energy sources. Common to both phenomena is a mechanism that is invisible, easily denied and difficult to document, yet capable of causing entirely real physiological and psychological harm. It is precisely this combination – the reality of injury in the absence of obvious traces – that makes such means especially dangerous from the standpoint of human rights protection: the harm occurs, but proving it is made difficult, which creates room for denial with impunity.

WHY SUCH POLICING PRACTICES THREATEN HUMAN RIGHTS

The use of a sonic weapon against a peaceful assembly engages several Convention rights at once. First of all, Article 3 is concerned (prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment), and in certain circumstances Article 2 as well (the right to life): a means that causes mass panic, bodily injuries and potentially serious health consequences for a large number of people is fully capable of reaching the threshold of severity envisaged by Article 3. The State’s positive obligations under this Article, as formulated in the Court’s case-law, comprise three elements: the obligation to put in place a legislative and regulatory framework of protection; in clearly defined circumstances, the obligation to take operational measures to protect specific individuals from a risk of prohibited treatment; and the obligation to carry out an effective investigation of arguable allegations of such treatment. Alongside this, Article 8 is engaged (respect for private life, which encompasses a person’s physical and psychological integrity), as are Article 11 (freedom of peaceful assembly) and Article 10 (freedom of expression).

The fundamental flaw of a sonic weapon lies in its indiscriminate character. A sound wave cannot be directed solely at those particular individuals who are allegedly behaving aggressively – it strikes the entire crowd without distinction: peaceful protesters, passers-by, journalists, medics, the elderly, children. This makes it practically impossible to comply with the requirement of proportionality, which is an indispensable condition for any lawful use of force by law-enforcement officers. Interference with Convention rights is lawful only where it is prescribed by law, pursues a legitimate aim and is necessary and proportionate in a democratic society. In the present case, even the first condition is not met: since the Serbian Law on the Police does not provide for the use of a sonic weapon, any use of it is not “prescribed by law” and is therefore unlawful under domestic law itself.

A particular threat is posed by the “invisible” and easily deniable character of such an impact. Where the harm is real but difficult to prove, the burden of proof in effect shifts onto the victims, and the State is tempted to deny the very fact that the weapon was used. This generates a structural risk of impunity, which is itself a threat to human rights, as it renders impossible the effective protection and restoration of the violated right. Finally, the use of such means has a pronounced chilling effect: the awareness that participation in the next protest may turn into a sudden attack on one’s health deters people from exercising freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. The matter therefore concerns not only harm to specific applicants at a specific moment, but also a preventive, future-oriented risk to an indeterminate and very wide circle of persons.

THE EROSION OF TRUST IN THE POLICE

Democratic policing rests on legitimacy and the consent of society. According to the classic principles of policing, the effectiveness of the police depends not on fear but on approval, voluntary cooperation and the trust of the population. The use of a weapon that harms peaceful citizens turns the very protective function of the police inside out, transforming a body intended to safeguard people’s safety into a source of danger to them. Such an inversion destroys the social contract on which policing by consent rests, and has long-term consequences for public safety, for people’s willingness to cooperate with the police, and for the rule of law in general.

Trust is destroyed not only by the very fact of the possible use of a weapon, but also by the pattern of the authorities’ subsequent conduct – denial and concealment. The Minister’s contradictory statements (first a denial of the very existence of sonic cannons, then an admission of their acquisition in 2021 coupled with a denial of their use), and especially the handing over of the “investigation” to a foreign special service – the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation – strip the process of any signs of independence and impartiality. A report prepared by such a service and assessed by experts as propagandistic and methodologically untenable is not only incapable of establishing the truth but also finally undermines public trust. An investigation that is not independent, impartial, prompt and capable of leading to the identification and punishment of those responsible does not satisfy the procedural limb of Article 3 of the Convention and at the same time destroys the legitimacy of the law-enforcement system.

The erosion of trust is deepened by accompanying practices: the stigmatisation of protesters as participants in a “colour revolution”, discrediting campaigns, reports of the use of spyware against journalists and human rights defenders, and leaks of personal data. All of this narrows civic space and entrenches the perception of the police as an instrument of political pressure rather than as a service to society. The only path to restoring trust in such circumstances is an effective, independent and impartial investigation, full transparency as to the means available and the circumstances of their possible use, and genuine accountability of those responsible. In the absence of this, the State loses not only trust in the police but also the capacity to maintain public order by methods compatible with democracy.

A DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION OF RULE 39 OF THE RULES OF THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Rule 39 of the Rules of Court governs interim (provisional) measures. Formally, it is contained not in the text of the Convention itself but in the Rules of Court, and it allows the Court, in exceptional circumstances – at the request of a party or of any other person concerned, or of its own motion – to indicate to the parties any interim measure which it considers should be adopted. Although formally this is an “indication”, the binding force of such measures derives from Article 34 of the Convention (the right of individual application): a State’s failure to comply with a Rule 39 measure may constitute a violation of Article 34. This approach was established in the Grand Chamber judgment Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey [GC] and confirmed, in particular, in Paladi v. Moldova [GC], Savriddin Dzhurayev v. Russia and Olaechea Cahuas v. Spain. Interim measures are thus de facto binding for compliance.

The conditions for the application of Rule 39 form a settled test. A measure is taken only on an exceptional basis where there is, first, an imminent risk; secondly, irreparable harm; and thirdly, a Convention right of such a character that the harm caused would not subsequently be amenable to reparation, restoration or adequate compensation. The burden of substantiating an imminent risk of irreparable harm rests on the applicant. Measures may be taken where this is necessary in the interests of the parties or of the proper conduct of the proceedings. The classic field of application of Rule 39 is cases concerning expulsion, extradition or forced return, in which the return of a person would expose them to a real risk of death (Article 2) or of torture or inhuman treatment (Article 3) – along the logic expressed as early as Soering v. the United Kingdom as regards non-return. Outside this field, interim measures are granted extremely rarely.

It is for this very reason that the decision in the present case is a notable and atypical example of the application of Rule 39, distinguished by several features at once. First, the measure has a preventive and future-oriented character: it is intended not to stop a specific imminent act against a named person at a known moment (such as a planned deportation), but to prevent an entire category of future conduct – any use of sonic devices for crowd control – at indeterminate future protests. Secondly, the measure has a general and collective character: it protects an indeterminate and exceptionally wide circle of persons, potentially the entire protesting community, rather than specific applicants who suffer individualised harm. Thirdly, it is open-ended in time – it operates “until further order”. Fourthly, it is addressed to the conduct of the State in the sphere of public-order maintenance and policing, rather than in the classic migration domain.

The Court’s reasoning was concise but telling. In granting the measure, the Court noted that the use of such a weapon for crowd control is unlawful under Serbian law, and also drew attention to the potentially serious health consequences for a large number of persons. It was precisely the combination of unlawfulness under domestic law with a grave and irreversible risk to the health of many people that, in the Court’s view, satisfied the threshold of imminence and irreparability of harm. At the same time, the Court strictly adhered to the principle of not prejudging the outcome: granting the measure does not mean that the Court has taken any position as to whether a sonic weapon was in fact used on 15 March 2025, and it does not affect any subsequent findings as to the admissibility or the merits of the case. Yet the very fact of granting the measure under such strict conditions signals at least the existence of an arguable (prima facie) complaint and of a real, rather than illusory, risk – otherwise the exceptional threshold of Rule 39 could not have been reached.

No less important for understanding the limits of Rule 39 is what the Court refused to grant. The applicants’ two other requests – not to allow the criminal prosecution of persons taking part in the public discussion of the events of 15 March, and to order the conduct of an effective investigation – the Court found to fall outside the Rule 39 procedure. This delineates the doctrinal limits of interim measures: Rule 39 is a shield against imminent irreparable physical harm, not an instrument for the preventive protection of the interests of freedom of expression or of the criminal process, nor a mechanism for compelling the conduct of an investigation. The latter is a matter of the State’s positive obligations, falling within the examination of the merits, rather than a subject for an interim measure. Such a position is consistent with the Court’s settled restrictive approach to Rule 39 and prevents it from being turned into a general means of influencing national policy.

Finally, an interim measure cannot exist in a vacuum: it is tied to existing or imminent proceedings. The Court therefore gave the applicants one month to submit a substantive application under Article 34 of the Convention. The State to which the measure is addressed is obliged to comply with it, and non-compliance risks a finding of a violation of Article 34; compliance is supervised by the Court and the Committee of Ministers. The significance of this case extends far beyond it: it is the first instance in the Court’s practice in which the question of acoustic (sonic) weapons has become the subject of an interim measure, and it will most likely shape European standards on “less lethal” crowd-control technologies and on the positive obligations of States. The case demonstrates the adaptability of Rule 39 beyond the migration paradigm – its suitability for responding to systemic risks in the sphere of public order – even though the Court formulated its measure cautiously and narrowly.

CONCLUSIONS

The case of Đorović and Others v. Serbia crystallises three interrelated propositions. First, the use of an indiscriminate, easily deniable weapon against peaceful assemblies is incompatible with the Convention: it engages Articles 3, 8, 10 and 11 and breaches the State’s positive obligations to protect people’s physical and psychological integrity and to carry out an effective investigation. Secondly, such practices, compounded by denial and by the imitation of an investigation by forces lacking independence, destroy the legitimacy and public trust on which democratic policing rests, transforming the police from a service of protection into a source of threat. Thirdly, Rule 39, traditionally a migration instrument, became in this case a rare preventive shield that protected an entire civic community from irreversible harm.

For Ukraine and other Council of Europe member States, this precedent is at once a warning and a standard. Crowd-control technologies require a clear legislative basis, strict observance of necessity and proportionality, independent oversight and an effective investigation of any allegations of their use. These requirements are entirely in keeping with the standards of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) on the use of force by law-enforcement officers and on the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty or under the control of the police. In the absence of these guarantees, the State risks losing both human rights and its own legitimacy: when the police use a weapon against citizens and then conceal it, what is lost is not only trust in the police but the very foundational condition of public order in a democratic society.

In stable political environments, closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, digital monitoring systems, and biometric databases serve as constitutive elements of what sociologists term “formal social control.” They operate not merely through the detection of deviance but through the presumption of permanent visibility: the surveilled subject modifies behaviour in anticipation of observation. Modern states extend this gaze into previously private domains. Under peacetime conditions, total surveillance ostensibly underwrites public order by deterring crime, legitimising state authority, and providing evidentiary accountability.

The wartime context fundamentally reverses this relationship. A striking empirical illustration emerged in March 2026, when Israeli authorities were reported to have physically removed CCTV cameras across different territories, not to protect citizens from surveillance, but to conceal the extent of damage sustained from Iranian missile strikes. The apparatus of total surveillance — designed to observe and discipline the population — was dismantled by the very state that constructed it, in order to manage the state’s own information environment. This episode crystallises what may be termed the sovereign surveillance paradox: in conditions of existential threat, the state suppresses its own panoptic infrastructure to preserve the appearance of security — and, by extension, the legitimacy of its social control project.

From a criminological standpoint, this dynamic raises profound questions. First, it exposes the ideological dimension of surveillance: CCTV systems are not neutral instruments of order but political technologies whose deployment and removal are subject to calculations of power. Second, it illustrates how war produces a condition of norm suspension in which the legal and institutional frameworks governing social control are subordinated to military imperatives. Criminality and deviance do not disappear in wartime; rather, their definition, measurement, and governance are radically transformed. Ordinary crime statistics become unreliable, prosecutorial capacity collapses, and informal social control mechanisms (community solidarity, collective punishment, vigilante justice) rush in to fill the institutional vacuum.

The deliberate dismantling of surveillance infrastructure under conditions of armed conflict compels criminologists to reconsider the relationship between visibility, power, and order. Total surveillance, far from being the apotheosis of social control, is revealed as a contingent and reversible technology — one that states deploy in peacetime to govern populations and abandon, selectively, when its panoptic logic threatens to expose the state’s own vulnerabilities. War, in this sense, does not merely destroy institutions of social control: it strips them of their pretence.

California is among the first states to address the issue. The reporting was cited in the legislative analysis of the bill that ultimately became the law.

Senate Bill 524, signed into law Oct. 10, requires police officers to disclose when they use AI to write police reports. The tools include Draft One, an AI assistant that transcribes and summarizes body-camera footage to produce a draft report, which officers can then revise and edit.

Specifically, the law now requires a written disclosure to appear at the bottom of each page of a police report for which Draft One or other similar tools were used. The legislation also requires an “audit trail” that would preserve the original draft as well as identify the source bodycam footage or audio.

Police departments in East Palo Alto and Fresno were among the first in the state to adopt the technology.

For example, officers must fill in prompts within the generated report, then sign off on the report’s accuracy before it can be submitted. The tool also includes a disclaimer that Draft One was used, though police agencies have thus far been able to customize where in a report it’s placed.

Police departments have said the technology saves officers significant time, and even that some AI-generated reports are better than the ones written entirely by officers. Nevertheless, the bill arose out of concerns that bias or errors generated by AI software could make their way into final incident reports, which play a key role in charging, detaining and sentencing suspects.

Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, which sponsored the bill, said she’s grateful the measure became law.

“Due process requires transparency,” Chatfield wrote in a public statement. “Everyone in the legal system — judges, juries, attorneys and the accused — deserve to know who wrote the police report.”

“With SB 524, California is sending a clear message: Innovation in policing must be tethered to accountability,” state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, who wrote the bill, said in the statement. “No more opaque reports, no more guessing whether AI shaped the narrative.”

Kevin Little, a defense attorney in Fresno, said the law is a step in the right direction, but not a true remedy.

“My own experience with AI in an unrelated context leads me to conclude that AI platforms have a significant amount of user bias and tend to support the agendas of the user,” he said.

Larry Bowlan, a spokesperson for the Fresno Police Department, said the agency had already implemented some of the safeguards now required by the law and does not expect the new rules to be especially burdensome.

“Our AI-powered narrative assistant … already generates a disclosure and requires our users to sign acknowledgements. Draft One also already produces the requisite audit trail,” he wrote in an email. “We are actively working with our vendor on the best solution for preserving and storing the first draft provided by the assistant, as well as a minor tweak to ensure the disclosure is present on each printed page, rather than just the first page as it is now.”

A spokesperson for the East Palo Alto Department said his agency has no official response to the law at this time.

Opponents of the bill included the California Police Chiefs Association and the Police Officers Research Association of California, a police union advocacy and lobbying group. The Chiefs Association did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, PORAC President Brian R. Marvel said the signed version of the law is an improvement over earlier drafts.

“In its original form, SB 524 would have put significant administrative burden on already short-staffed police forces and created broad liability by requiring agencies to retain every AI-generated draft, interim, and final version of a report, each labeled with AI disclosure language,” he wrote. “PORAC advocated to amend this bill … We were pleased to see several of these amendments taken, with the final version of the bill significantly narrowed.”

Axon representative Victoria Keough said the company is committed to complying with all state and federal laws, including SB 524.

“When developing AI for public safety, transparency and accountability are essential,” Keough wrote in a statement. “Responsible innovation remains at the core of how Axon designs and delivers new technology.”

The new requirements go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

By Kerry Klein, KVPR

Kerry Klein is a reporter and editor with KVPR in Fresno. Additional reporting was provided by KQED’s Sukey Lewis. The story was produced with support from The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. 

Despite this, the system has continued to function as a system of social control informed by carceral logics. Families become trapped within this extensive system of surveillance, many who receive little reprieve from the issues that brought them to the system’s attention.

Once involved in the system, families are forced to comply with services focused on regulation of the behaviors deemed to be harmful or risky, while the system employs an escalating series of punishments to ensure compliance including the forcible separation of children from their families. In this paper, we analyze these functions of surveillance, regulation, and punishment, adapting and extending penal techniques described by Kohler-Hausmann (2019) to position the child welfare system as an arm of the carceral continuum used to maintain the oppression of Black communities.

As such, we use the term family policing to more accurately capture the carceral functions of the child welfare system and the role it plays in the lives of families.

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I will first discuss the key challenges that have combined to create this dramatic drop in public confidence, together with a brief analysis of these issues and why they are important. To start, I will give a brief outline of recent reports highlighting cases of egregious police conduct and corrosive operational culture. 

That will be followed by an exploration of how the police are in danger of losing the trust, legitimacy and authority they need to regain and sustain public confidence. 

Next, will be an evaluation of the extent and impact of operational culture on policing delivery, including the repeated and damaging charges of institutional racism, misogyny and bigotry. This will also include a discussion about the impact of politics and populism. 

Following, will be a brief assessment of the current governance model and the extent to which politics interferes with operational policing and decision making. 

In the next session, I will return to the role of policing and why it is essential to have a clear working definition. Without those agreed guidelines, it is impossible to determine the correct background, experiences, qualifications, skills and attitude needed by aspiring candidates. This has implications for ‘professionalising’ the police. 

The final part of my presentation will be the case for a Royal Commission on Policing. For too long, the response to crises has been superficial and ineffectual. Ambulatory measures, or band aid, will no longer suffice. They simply perpetuate the problems and reinforce cynicism. We are past that. The only way to address the challenge is to undertake a robust and rigorous investigation into policing and its governance.

Reports highlighting egregious police behaviour

Recent events have shone a light on the toxic culture in operational policing. This was brought into sharp focus by Baroness Casey’s report on culture and standards of behaviour in the Metropolitan Police. Most alarming was her finding that the Met was institutionally racist. 

As if that were not warning enough, the HMICFRS report on misogyny, misconduct and vetting, painted a very sombre picture of British policing. Ruth Davison, the Chief Executive of Refuge, said this: 

“This report, which highlights a systemic culture of misogyny, sexism, and predatory behaviour towards women in policing in many forces, presents an overview of abhorrent behaviours and practices running deep within the police force across the county. Behaviours which are directly contributing to the lack of trust that women have in the police, which makes them less likely to report crimes committed against them and puts their lives at risk.

It is unconscionable for politicians, police leaders and police forces to do anything other than take radical action to overhaul the police recruitment and complaints processes and instruct root and branch reform. The police are supposed to be the first line of defence for women and girls, yet wholly inadequate practices are allowing the wrong people to join, and stay in, the force, and turning a blind eye when these officers commit crimes, or display behaviours which should have no place in the force.

Minoritised men and women have warned for decades that the police are institutionally racist, and now we know that they are also allowing a culture of violent misogyny to go unchecked and largely unpunished. Officers with misconduct allegations are able to rotate between forces and serious incidents are falling through cracks in the system.  

The time for words and commitments to review is over. Only radical reform and a zero-tolerance policy will go anyway to restoring trust in the police”

Even more disturbing, was the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving Met officer, Wayne Couzens. 

Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer and three separate forces “could and should have” stopped him, a damning report by Lady Elish Angiolini has found. The 51-year-old former firearms officer’s history of alleged sexual offending and predilection for violent and extreme pornography dated back to 1995. Couzens allegedly sexually assaulted a child and attempted to kidnap a woman at knife-point in the years before he abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard on 3 March 2021.

Although shocking, none of the revelations in these reports comes as a surprise, as there have been many such claims over the years, including those in the 1981 Scarman Report, which highlighted the burning mistrust of the police by many of the black community in Brixton.

Taken together, these reports explain why public confidence in policing is eroding and why there is a powerful case for radical reform.

Rick Muir from the Police Foundation asserts, like many other authoritative commentators, that these reports expose the existence of a toxic culture in parts of policing. A significant minority of officers have been engaging in racist, misogynistic, or homophobic behaviour that has not been ‘called out’ by the majority. 

As Muir correctly identifies, vetting procedures are woefully inadequate to prevent wholly inappropriate and unsuitable candidates from being appointed. Clearly a major overhaul is urgently required.

Muir makes a powerful argument for change. There should be zero tolerance of racism, misogyny, homophobia and any other kind of prejudice in policing. The challenge now is do we bring about that change? Piecemeal or ambulatory measures will never of themselves be sufficient. The problem is far more urgent and serious for that to work. 

Trust, legitimacy and authority

It seems axiomatic to say that good policing is founded on trust, legitimacy and authority and that, without it, there can be no true public consent. While the notion of policing by consent may appear to be a central tenet to the British approach, recent evidence suggests otherwise, particularly in respect of the policing of minority groups, whose relationships with the police have been at best strained and at worst hostile. These tensions have been inflamed where those communities feel there has been racial bias and police misconduct. 

The introduction of community policing was an attempt to bolster the public image and legitimacy of the police. But it has not always enjoyed the success it was designed for, principally because it was undermined by the introduction of ‘crime fighting’ targets in the 1990s and a more ‘managerialist’, and populist, approach to policing, from both Labour and Conservative governments. There has, though, been a growing acknowledgement that good policing can only be realised where the police have been given popular legitimacy by the communities they police. Procedural justice theories provide a significant development for policing in that they are a route to build legitimacy.

Hough suggests that for the police to be more effective in their crime fighting role, they must first build trust with those they police, which is a prerequisite to establish their legitimacy. 

Procedural justice theory is an integral part of the wider body of theories of policing. In respect of policing, Hough argues that procedural justice theory provides one explanation of the processes by which police and other law enforcement agencies can secure both compliance and acceptance of the law, without having to resort to coercive force. It is a social-psychological theory about legitimacy, which offers real and practical benefits to the police.

Hough explores some basic ideas around police legitimacy, as seen through the eyes of those being policed. Policing styles have a significant bearing on building legitimacy. He suggests that procedural fairness is the best route for success is for the police. The more dignity and respect shown by the police, the greater their legitimacy will be acknowledged.

Hough asserts that good policing is central to effective policing. He bases his argument on the evidence from research studies into procedural fairness, which he acknowledges is largely quantitative. What seems clear from the evidence is that people value fairness and fair treatment. Hough acknowledges it is not the only method to ensure compliance, as other instrumental strategies, such as inducements, rewards and punishments, can be deployed.

The points of friction between the police and minority groups are examined and Hough highlights how trust in the police can be lost through unaddressed stereotyping and racial discrimination. 

It is a highly contentious issue, with no simple solutions. However, Hough does offer some very useful suggestions to help address these structural challenges, some of which will be new to those in the field. First, Hough calls for clear leadership and advocacy of procedural fairness principles by chief officers and BCU commanders. Second, he argues the police should ensure that internal styles of management are consistent with principles of organisational justice. Third, there should be training for front line staff and their supervisors. Fourth, staff should be equipped with more specific de-escalation skills to help with the handling of conflict and defiance. Finally, there should be effective community consultation in place.

Many other scholars have focused their attention on this aspect of policing. See ‘Just Authority? Trust in the Police in England and Wales’, 2012, Jackson, Bradford, Stanko and Hohl.

Politics, populism and operational culture

The celebrated scholar, Professor Robert Reiner, has written extensively about the sociology of policing for over three decades. His knowledge and authority in this field are second to none. His exploration of police culture, in which he drew upon the work of other leading academics, remains essential reading for all students of policing and law enforcement.

Reiner builds on earlier research by Skolnick (1966), which attempted to describe and define the ‘working personality’ of a police officer. However, as noted by Reiner, Skolnick’s work failed to draw out the political dimensions, an important component of police occupational culture. Reiner argues that politics is therefore a critical consideration in the analysis of policing.

Through research, we know that policing remains for many officers more than just a job: it is a vocation with a worthwhile purpose. There is a sense of mission, where the objective is the maintenance of a valued way of life and the protection of the weak against the predatory. 

However, it can manifest in a set of sub-values, in which cynicism, pessimism, suspicion, isolation and solidarity can all figure prominently. This engenders a feeling that the police are a beleaguered minority, which is about to be overrun. Only the police, in this interpretation, can comprehend the scale of the challenge. 

Reiner asserts that the police service was, and largely remains, an occupation drawn from the working class, including chief constables. Evidence suggests the police are conservative, both politically and morally. This may not be surprising, given the nature of their work, the hierarchical rank structure and their perceived mission. Reiner further notes that the police have frequently been pitted against organised the Labour Party and the Left.

In terms of political affiliation or support, studies conducted in the 1970s and 1990s suggest the police are overwhelmingly Conservative. One study found that 80% of police considered themselves Tory supporters. Worryingly, 18% of that group identified as far right. 

Reiner (2010) said,

‘The police became a Tory-leaning partisan political lobby. A ‘bobby lobby’ emerged, spearheaded by public interventions by prominent chief police officers and by the Police Federation’s embracing of the Conservative Party’s espousal of law and order as an electoral issue. This played a crucial role in Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1979.’

Despite this clear evidence of Conservative support, the police have consistently opined that policing should be politically neutral. It would be interesting to see whether these findings would be replicated in 2024, now that Police and Crime Commissioners are firmly established in the governance model. 

With the rise of populism and authoritarian regimes, there has been increasing concern about the impact on law enforcement. 

The Washington Post on 10th January, 2021 reported, that several serving police officers faced dismissal, suspension or other forms of discipline for their involvement in, or proximity to, the Capitol riot in Washington on January 6th, 2021. Sadly, this is not surprising, as there is evidence that white supremacist groups may have infiltrated American police forces across the US and is widespread (The Guardian Newspaper, 27th August,2020).  While nothing of that magnitude has occurred in the UK, there is little doubt, judging from some aspects of social media, that serving and former officers are not necessarily fully immune from aspects of alt right populism. The Independent Newspaper on 5th March, 2020, reported that a young London police officer had been arrested for belonging to a proscribed organisation associated with right wing terrorism. 

There are clearly worrying developments that should cause considerable anxiety to all liberal democracies and senior policing leaders.

PCCs are affiliated to political parties. There are few, if any, safeguards to ensure that candidates going forward for election have the skills, knowledge, authority and wisdom to undertake such an important role (Bailey, 2017). Democracy trumps all of that. More about the governance model later.

Brogden and Ellison (2012)  assert that State policing is, and always has been, partisan. Now, as then, it is those at the lower end of the socio-economic scale (the ‘Other’), who bear the brunt of police attention. They argue that policing has always been committed to the maintenance of a divisive social order. Summary justice for those on the margins of society continues unchecked. 

The last government failed to recognise, understand and deal with the growing incidence of poverty. New responses were required to deal with the dispossessed, rather than locking them out of sight. 

Crime, in the eyes of those on the right, is seen as those offences generally committed by the working classes. It is visible and problematic. However, little mention is made of white-collar crime or corruption, which can account for many millions of pounds. Neither was there any commentary about the crisis in our prisons, where resources are stretched to breaking point and recidivism seems to be more evident than rehabilitation. 

Government policy needs to act positively in a cohesive and coherent manner that understands and frees people from being marginalised, rather than create a continuous circle of certainty. 

Democratic governance of the police

The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in 2012, together with a new governance model designed to hold the police to account, brought politics firmly into policing. Hitherto, the acknowledged convention was that operational policing and politics should be kept apart. The doctrine of operational independence appears to have been firmly endorsed by the recent Police Foundation Structural Review but it failed to mention a High Court judgement, which challenged this doctrine (see R v Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire Police, 2017).  This judgement, in making the PCC responsible for all operational policing activity, questions the tradition of constabulary independence.  This is clearly an issue that requires further testing in the courts (Loveday, 2018)

Interestingly, the recently published structural review of policing from the Police Foundation (see Section 12), appears to accept without too much challenge that Police and Crime Commissioners are performing well in their role of holding chief constables to account. The possibility of political interference is dismissed without question. However, PCCs wield enormous power and there is considerable evidence to suggest that the current governance model does not adequately provide the means or resources to hold them to account (Bailey, 2015 and 2017). The current batch of PCCs were elected in 2024 and almost all of them are active members of political parties. This is a marked change from the position in 2012, when nearly one third of PCCs claimed to be independent. Research has shown that where the PCC and Crime Panel share the same political affiliation, objectivity may be at risk. The outgoing Tory PCC from Devon and Cornwall made precisely this allegation and asserted strongly that politics should be removed from the equation (Bailey, 2017). Partisan politics would now appear to be the order of the day and this raises significant concerns around the need for, and delivery of, objective, evidence-based policing strategies.

There is no requirement for PCCs to have relevant skills, background or experience. Democracy and political agendas will always trump that. This can be problematic, given the only realistic way of removing them is by the ballot box every four years (Bailey, 2017). It is rather ironic that PCCs were introduced to hold chief constables to account but themselves have no effective scrutiny. There is only little acknowledgement in the Police Foundation Report that the current governance model may have some flaws around PCC accountability. Recommendation 45 suggests new legislation for the introduction of ‘recall referenda’, triggered by Police and Crime Panels with a two thirds majority, when PCCs no longer enjoy their confidence. There are just two grounds for this to occur and these are:

• Where the PCC has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment
• Where the PCC has been found to have breached the Nolan principles of public life

If these conditions are satisfied, the Police and Crime Panel may proceed with a recall referendum, where just 10% of the electorate are required to terminate the PCC’s employment. What the Police Foundation Report fails to consider is the extent to which politics may get in the way of reaching objective decisions, especially where the PCC and the Police and Crime Panel are from the same political party. Tribal political allegiance could pose a significant threat to objectivity (See above)

There is no in-depth analysis in the Police Foundation Report about the effectiveness of Police and Crime Panels in scrutinising their Commissioners. There is now considerable evidence that Panels have neither the resources, nor expertise, to fulfil their role. Most Panel members are local councillors, who lack the time, authority and continuity to be effective. Representatives on the Panel come from the relevant local councils. Their portfolios are determined at annual council meetings, and it is not always certain that those who are best suited will be allocated to the Panel. Independent Panel members, on the other hand, are recruited for their professional skills and expertise. They are generally more committed, have greater continuity and are less prone to political bias. However, independent members are always in a small minority on their Panels. It seems clear that much more thought needs to be given to the role, power and resources of Panels (Bailey, 2017). 

When the governance model was first introduced in 2012, Police and Crime Panels were an after-thought. They were never intended to circumscribe the power of PCCs. It is now time for urgent reform (Bailey, 2017).

The clash between policing and politics is perhaps illustrated best when looking at the Metropolitan Police and the dismissal of two of its commissioners. In 2008, Ian Blair resigned after declaring he no longer had the confidence of the London Mayor, Boris Johnson. At the time, there was a Labour government, with whom Johnson repeatedly clashed. This situation was repeated earlier this year (2022), when Cressida Dick resigned after announcing she no longer had the support of the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan. As with the first ‘dismissal’, the government and the Mayor were from different political parties and there were clearly marked differences in policing philosophy. These differences are almost tribal in nature and have assumed centre stage, at the expense of critical evaluation of policing delivery and effective democratic governance. Some have argued for a complete overhaul of the governance model (Bailey, 2017), involving the introduction of highly qualified and professional PCCs. Given the adversarial nature of British politics, that appears unlikely to happen.

The need for democratic oversight of policing remains essential, especially given the serious and deteriorating loss of trust by the public in the police service, a point noted in the recently published Strategic Review of Policing. The challenge is to develop a system that acknowledges politics without being governed by petty tribalism, so that real progress, in terms of policing reform, becomes a reality. A half-way measure might be to reintegrate police governance with local government, in a way not dissimilar to the London Assembly system. However, that will not take away the element of adversarial, partisan politics. Neither will it address the problem of equipping local councillors with the time, experience, expertise and commitment to their role on the Police and Crime Panel (Bailey, 2017). It seems clear that the role of independents needs to be expanded, as they bring greater professional experience, more robust commitment and are free from party whips (Bailey, 2017). It is disappointing that the Police Foundation has not explored further the importance of having independent PCCs and Crime Panel members. 

The police role – a need for clarity

One of the central problems in policing is the absence of a universally agreed working definition of the police role. It is of vital importance because it is a prerequisite to determining the skills, qualifications, experience and psychological attitudes required to be a police officer. 

On the one hand, there is a view that police should confine themselves largely to crime-fighting and leave other agencies to manage the myriad of non-police related tasks. This is a view largely articulated by those on the right of politics, as we witnessed with the last Tory government. The alternative view, largely supported by the progressive Left, is that, as Reiner notes below, the police provide a 24 x 7 social service, responding to increasing demands for assistance that are not strictly crime related. In so doing, the police won the trust and legitimacy with their residents, leading to better relationships and increasing crime detection rates. The austerity cuts to policing and other public sector agencies meant that the police were being asked to do a lot more with fewer officers, leading to a critical reduction in community policing. The consequence has been a preponderance of response policing, with very little time for the police to engage constructively with their communities. This has added to the growing alienation between the police and the public. This has become a significant issue, and it is to be hoped the new Labour government will invest heavily in the expansion of Neighbourhood policing.

There is, though,  common agreement about the fundamentals of the police role, which the Police Foundation notes as:

‘The purpose of the police service is to uphold the law fairly and firmly; to prevent crime; to pursue and bring to justice those who break the law; to keep the Queen’s peace; to protect, help and reassure the community; and to be seen to do this with integrity, common sense and sound judgement.’

There is considerable debate, however, among academics and police practitioners about what the police actually do. In the view of respected criminologists like Reiner, policing has never been primarily concerned about catching criminals. Indeed, he notes:

‘It raises false expectations about what the police can do about crime, condemns them to a quixotic quest beyond their capacity, and neglects what people in practice demand from the police. Its apparent obviousness derives largely from media representations, the main source of “information” about crime and policing for most people. Media stories (both news and fictional) focus overwhelmingly on successful police investigations of very serious violent crimes, especially murder, which form only a small part of the police workload. And the police are spectacularly less successful in clearing up crimes than media stories suggest: far fewer than 2% of crimes result in a conviction.’

It seems clear that the police role covers a variety and wide-ranging list of tasks and responsibilities, with crime-fighting being an important, though not exclusive, element. If the broader role of policing is to be accepted, then there must be an explicit acknowledgement that crime, crime prevention and community safety cannot be left to the police alone. There is a powerful argument for re-establishing the community safety partnerships introduced in the early 1990s, following the release of the Morgan Report in 1991. It promoted multi-agency approaches to crime and community safety, involving both public and private sector bodies, through shared resources, shared data, joint training, aligned boundaries and ambitious targets. I was seconded from the Thames Valley Police in 1991 to help set up the Thames Valley Safer Communities Partnership. I recruited many of the trustees, including James Marshall, the author of this seminal report. 

The initial enthusiasm and advocacy for this holistic approach was palpable. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, the Partnerships were no longer viable and most have fallen by the wayside. I would be a keen supporter for their reintroduction, but it will require strong support from government, both in terms of resources and philosophy.

The case for a Royal Commission 

Public confidence and trust in the police is at an all time low. We have seen the service haemorrhaging support in recent years, caused by relentless reports of shocking and unacceptable behaviour. The police themselves have been impacted by these constant allegations of egregious conduct, combined with a growing disrespect for their senior leaders. Morale in the police service has plummeted and experienced officers are leaving in record numbers, which is deeply worrying. Surveys conducted by the Police Federation consistently paint a picture of a service at crisis point. The report from the Police Foundation commented lengthily and authoritatively about the need for reform but its recommendations fall short of what is required.

Hitherto, the police service has responded to crises by dealing with them in isolation, rarely acknowledging the wider contributary factors. This is akin to applying band aid and there is little wonder the results have always been the same. What’s needed is a root and branch review of policing to include a rigorous assessment of the role and governance of the service. 

Once the agreed role of the police is firmly established, appropriate recruitment criteria can be developed. This is especially important. The key components should be:

• Educational qualifications – including the capacity to undertake higher level /degree courses
• Agreement on ‘professional’ status of the police and what that means for aspiring applicants
• Clear entry routes for candidates
• People skills – communication, empathy, listening, problem solving
• Psychological suitability – to rule out extreme views and capacity to learn. Rigorous attitude testing before being called for interview
• Ongoing training – similar to that received by other professional practitioners

The Commission should also consider the following:

• A full review of the rank structure to acknowledge the importance of increasing professionalisation
• A review of supervisory roles – responsibilities, oversight and training
• A commitment to community safety partnerships – to consider joint agency training, data sharing and shared long-term objectives
• Reform of the governance model – Consider the removal of party politics and upskilling and properly funding Police and Crime Panels

There is so much more a Royal Commission will need to do to ensure the widest ranging thoroughgoing review of policing. To secure the necessary reform, it’s the only option.

Concluding comments

• Policing has lost its way. Now widespread recognition that things need to change
• Traditional responses to crises haven’t touched the surface
• Major review and reform is required – hence the call for a Royal Commission
• The new government must grasp this challenge. It is not a quick fix and there are few attractive soundbites
• The composition of the Commission is important – must be representative and led by a Judge

Dr Roy Bailey

In addition, Russia is also involving Ukrainian children in acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks against their own country, often without their knowledge.

However, apart from the crimes committed by Russia against Ukrainian children, there are other problems that have not disappeared with the start of the full-scale war and that affect minors, such as bullying, teenage fights, etc.

Ukrinform spoke with the head of the Ukrainian juvenile police, Vasyl Bohdan, about this, as well as about bullying in educational institutions, juvenile crime, and how to increase children’s trust in adults.

– How many crimes against children have been recorded in Ukraine since the start of the large-scale war, and how many of them were committed by Russians?

– Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 11,000 crimes against children have been recorded. The highest number was recorded in 2023, when there were almost 4,700 such crimes. In 2024, 3,400 such crimes were recorded. Here we see a 26% decrease in the number of these offences, and this figure is even lower than in 2021, before the war.

It should be noted that most of these crimes are serious and particularly serious offences, in particular against sexual freedom and sexual integrity. Bullying, internet fraud, etc. were also recorded.

We do not keep separate statistics on crimes committed specifically by Russians. But the figures we have speak for themselves – for example, as of today, at least 20,000 children have been deported by the Russians.

In general, we continue to see a downward trend in the number of crimes committed against children.

– When it comes to general criminal offences against children, what types of crimes against minors have been recorded most since the start of the full-scale war?

– In this context, I can say that since the start of the full-scale invasion, most crimes committed against children have been crimes against life and health. Among them, the most common are intentional bodily harm, beatings, torture, and sexual offences.

In 2024 alone, we recorded 546 such cases. These include sexual violence, sexual acts with persons under the age of 16, molestation and others. These crimes account for a significant proportion of the total number of offences committed against children, and this is an extremely sensitive issue.

We are, of course, taking this into account and stepping up our preventive work with educational institutions. We are also involving parents in this process, because without joint action it will be very difficult for us to prevent such offences.

– How has the structure of crime changed in terms of crimes committed by children themselves, comparing the periods before and after the start of the full-scale war? What trends and major changes in this area can we talk about now?

– Since the start of the full-scale invasion, minors in Ukraine have committed more than 8,500 criminal offences. Most often these are thefts, bodily harm, etc.

It should be noted here that, for example, the number of crimes committed by children in the first year of the full-scale war decreased significantly compared to the pre-war year of 2021 – by almost 40%.

This is partly explained by restrictions on the movement of people, the transition of schools to distance learning, changes in lifestyle, the temporary occupation of territories and the evacuation of the population, including abroad.

In 2023, unfortunately, we saw an increase in the number of such cases compared to 2022, but in 2024 we again recorded a decrease in such offences. And now the number of these crimes continues to decline.

Another new phenomenon that we are increasingly encountering is digital crime – fraud through social networks, participation in various schemes in which children are involved by criminals and even hostile special services. For example, in 2024 alone, the number of fraud cases involving minors increased by almost 30%.

It should be noted that both COVID-19 and the war have created favourable conditions for the spread of such phenomena.

Speaking in general about crimes committed by children, over the past eight years, thanks to preventive measures, we have seen a downward trend in the number of these offences.

– Can you tell us whether children most often commit crimes alone or in groups? And what are the most common reasons and factors behind why they do this?

– A significant proportion of crimes are committed by teenagers alone, although there are also cases where offences are committed by groups. What they have in common are the reasons behind them. Most of these children are raised in difficult conditions without proper supervision.

Among the reasons for this, we see problems in the family, low levels of well-being, abuse by parents or guardians, alcohol, drugs, and the influence of criminal subculture, etc.

The main reason here is the lack of life experience and understanding of the consequences among the children themselves. That is why it is important for adults to be close to children and teach them to distinguish between what is acceptable and what is dangerous.

– In April this year, a teenager in the Kirovohrad region was sentenced to corrective labour instead of a prison term. How effective do you think this method is – imposing a more lenient punishment on children instead of imprisonment for crimes committed? And do you think this practice should be scaled up across Ukraine?

I believe that this practice is effective and necessary. In general, it is a path to the rehabilitation of the child, not to recidivism.

In most cases, when it comes to offences committed through carelessness, peer pressure or difficult life circumstances, harsh punishment in the form of imprisonment not only does not help, but sometimes even harms.

Our goal, as the police, juvenile prevention, and part of the state, is not to break the child, but to help them rethink their actions so that they understand where they made the wrong decision and what they should have done in a given situation, to help them change and get on the right track.

And it is community service or other alternative sanctions instead of prison terms that give them the opportunity to do so.

This form of responsibility also allows us not to separate the child from socialisation, to ensure their connection with their family, and at the same time teaches them that they must be responsible for all their actions.

If this is combined with educational work, the involvement of psychologists, and community support, the combined effect can be much stronger than that of the classic punitive model, so to speak.

Currently, we are working with the Office of the Prosecutor General to implement a pilot project on the implementation of international standards of child-friendly justice. And it is yielding positive results.

Therefore, in my opinion, this practice should not only be supported, but systematically scaled up throughout Ukraine — of course, with the caveat that lenient punishment should only be applied in cases where it is truly appropriate. In other words, it is not necessary to release everyone from imprisonment, nor is it necessary to do so in situations with serious consequences or in cases of repeat offences.

– Let’s talk about the recruitment of Ukrainian children by Russians. Has Russia started doing this less now? And can we say that in some regions of Ukraine children are recruited more often, and in others less? Does geography play a role here?

– Recently, we have seen a slight but steady decline in the recruitment of children by Russians. This has been achieved primarily through systematic preventive measures.

Geography is not a significant factor here. These cases occur throughout the country. Of course, in large regions, the proportion of recruited children is higher. In particular, this refers to the Odesa, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv regions, as well as Kyiv. However, this does not mean that children in other regions are not at risk or that the likelihood is lower.

– How many teenagers have been detained since the start of the full-scale war for committing acts of sabotage and terrorism while carrying out tasks for the Russian Federation? And were there any children among those who agreed to do this who were aware that they could die as a result of carrying out these tasks?

– This year, we have recorded 65 cases of criminal offences of a sabotage nature involving 62 children aged 13 to 17. These are not just numbers, these are tragedies that could have been avoided.

The main motivation that can be identified after communicating with such children is financial. These teenagers also have a desire to assert themselves or a blind belief that they will not be caught.

But none of the children realised that they could die or suffer terrible injuries. They all considered it an easy side job, sometimes without even knowing that they were working for the enemy.

That is why we are talking about the importance of preventive work and conducting an active information campaign on this issue — so that every child knows that such offers should not be accepted.

– How often do children report attempts by Russians to recruit them? And speaking of the preventive information campaign conducted by the National Police, in particular, relevant lessons in schools in conjunction with law enforcement colleagues, how effective do you think it is?

– The number of reports we receive about attempts to recruit children increases in direct proportion to the increase in the intensity of this information campaign.

As of today, we have received almost 70 such reports from children about attempts to recruit them. And this is directly related to the information campaign currently being conducted by the juvenile prevention service in conjunction with the Security Service of Ukraine and educators.

We visit schools, talk to teenagers without moralising, honestly explain how the enemy works, what recruitment is, and what it can lead to. And we talk not only to children, but also to parents and teaching staff, communicating and explaining how to identify it and how to talk to children about it. And this set of measures gives us exactly these results.

The main goal here is not just to tell them, to talk about it, but to make sure that the child knows that they are not alone and that they can stop this crime before it happens.

– What responsibility will children bear who, for example, without realising what they were getting themselves into, carried out a few easy tasks from their supervisors, and after the supervisors gave them a difficult task, realised what was happening and wanted to report it to adults? Should they be afraid to report it to the police? Should they be afraid of, for example, imprisonment? Where does administrative responsibility end and criminal responsibility begin?

– If a child realises that someone is trying to involve them in a crime and reports it to adults or the police, or to the police together with adults, then this is an extremely correct and important step, and there is no need to be afraid in this situation.

When it comes to liability, each situation is unique. It depends on a large number of factors, including age and what the child has actually done.

If, for example, it is a matter of putting up posters or painting graffiti, this can be classified as an administrative offence. If a minor, even without realising it, has helped the enemy in sabotage activities, this falls under the Criminal Code.

But if the child stopped, did not complete the crime and voluntarily turned to the police, this is considered a mitigating circumstance. Law enforcement officers will meet such a child halfway, help them and support them, because we understand how important and difficult this step is for them.

It is very important that even in such situations, children are not afraid to tell the truth and turn to the police. This is a chance to prevent a tragedy that could happen.

Maria Gonchar, Kyiv

Photo by Danilo Antonuk

Forced displacement of Ukrainian children remains widespread in territories that are temporarily occupied or under constant shelling. At the same time, there is still no single transparent algorithm or mechanism that allows Ukrainian children deported to Russia to be returned. Another pressing issue is the lack of a systematic state reintegration programme for returned children, which should provide long-term support and assistance to the child and their family.

Unfortunately, no significant changes have taken place in the context of deinstitutionalisation. The newly adopted strategy to ensure every child in Ukraine has the right to grow up in a family environment carries a significant risk of non-implementation due to a lack of state funding and often declaratory nature of the commitments made. The development of social protection in local communities also remains very slow. Some communities, especially those with small budgets, cannot afford to hire even one social worker or specialist for the children’s needs. At the same time, those communities that do have such specialists or even social service centres and child welfare services are also unable to fully perform their functions due to inadequate staffing levels and an increase in socially vulnerable groups.

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child defines six grave crimes against children: murder or mutilation, recruitment or enlistment in the military, attacks on schools and hospitals, rape, abduction/transfer and denial of access to humanitarian assistance. Due to Russia’s massive shelling of Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure, children are being killed and maimed. There is evidence of a physical and sexual violence against children in the temporarily occupied territories. Children are being militarised and recruited into the war, and Ukrainians are being deported to Russia.

As of December 2024, approximately, 737000 Ukrainian children are internally displaced persons as a result of the hostilities. Another 1,7 million are refugees, many of whom have been separated from their parents. As of 31 March 2025, 606 children have been killed, 1846 have been injured to varying degrees, and 19 cases of sexual violence against children have been confirmed.

As a result of targeted attacks, as well as indiscriminate attacks, Russian military troops are destroying intentionally residential buildings, schools, hospitals, sport courts, historical and cultural sites. Even after the War ends, it will be impossible to return to a significant number of cities, towns and villages, as the infrastructure there has been virtually destroyed.

In three years of full-scale War, 236000 residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed, including 209000 private homes, 27000 apartment buildings and 600 dormitories. More than 4000 educational institutions have also been destroyed or damaged, including 229 schools, 110 kindergartens and 97 universities. Hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities are regularly targeted. In total, 1554 medical facilities have been damaged, including 515 hospitals, and 465 outpatient clinics. 3921 cultural facilities, 399 religious buildings and 343 sports complexes have also been damaged. There have been attacks on energy infrastructure and water supply facilities, causing Ukrainians to experience problems with electricity, water and heat supply, as well as communications, which worsens the conditions for the care and upbringing of children.

Russia is actively using prohibited weapons on the territory of Ukraine against the civilian population. Such weapons cause more serious injuries and damage than other types of ammunition. Cluster munitions, phosphorus and thermobaric weapons, butterfly mines, etc. are particularly dangerous. Over the three years of the War, more than 6900 cases of Russian occupiers using ammunition containing dangerous chemicals have also been confirmed. According to the Mine Action Centre, about 30% of Ukraine’s territory is contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance, and more than 139000 km2 of land and 14000 km2 of water bodies need to be surveyed by demining units.

In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, there is extensive evidence of the occupiers using civilian facilities as military headquarters and/or warehouses for military equipment and ammunition. In conditions where children are forced to attend schools and kindergartens in the temporarily occupied territories and, when necessary, visit medical facilities, this means that the civilian population is being used as human shields during military operations. It also means that the population has no proper access to medical, social and educational services, which only exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in these territories.

The Russian Federation continues to involve Ukrainian children in the War. In particular, Russian special services use mobile gaming applications and establish contact through social networks and messengers to recruit minors. Children are usually offered monetary rewards for performing various tasks, such as photographing the area, monitoring certain objects, posting advertisements, etc. For more serious tasks (delivering bags with explosives, setting cars on fire, etc.), psychological pressure and manipulation are also used. As of the end of March 2025, the prosecutor’s office had opened 173 criminal cases on the recruitment of Ukrainian children for subversive activities.

For example, in August 2025, the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police detained two underage Russian agents who, on orders from the Russian Federation, carried out a terrorist attack in Zhytomyr on 5 August. The attack involved the detonation of a homemade explosive device in one of the neighbourhoods of the capital of the region.  One man was killed and another was hospitalised in serious condition. The investigation established that the attack was planned by a 17-year-old student at a local vocational school and her peer, who had been recruited by the enemy. Both came to the attention of the aggressor while seeking for money on Telegram channels[1]/

In addition, Russia continues to expand its network of so called ‘military-patriotic education’ programmes for young people in the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine with the aim of waging a long-term war against Ukraine and possible future armed conflicts with Western countries.

As of early 2025, Russian invaders had forced nearly 60,000 children from temporarily occupied settlements in the Luhansk region, about 1,800 children from the Zaporizhzhia region, and 45,000 children from Crimea to join propaganda military-patriotic movements. In just eight months of 2025, Russia took almost 11000 Ukrainian children to 164 institutions. Moreover, the programme in such camps is becoming increasingly militarised[2].

The militarisation of children is actively taking place from school age onwards. One example is last year’s publication of the first textbook for teaching drone operation in school labour classes for pupils in grades 8-9. Another example is the active manufacture of weapon parts for specific military units by pupils in schools in the Crimea.

Forced displacement remains widespread in territories that are temporarily occupied or under constant shelling. Children are often forcibly sent to ‘re-education camps’ in Russian-controlled territories, where propaganda and indoctrination are used to try to change their perceptions of their identity, Ukraine, and the course of the war. Children in such camps are forced to listen to the anthem and express support for Russia. Teenagers are often issued Russian passports, which makes it much more difficult for them to return home. The militarisation of boys and attempts to recruit them into the Russian army are also widespread. In addition, the conditions in which children are kept in such camps are unfit for human habitation. The Russians ignore the basic needs of children in terms of hygiene, medical care, adequate nutrition, etc.

According to statements by representatives of the occupation administrations, during the summer of 2024, 40,000 Ukrainian children were taken to ‘re-education camps’ as part of so called ‘Useful Holidays’ project. This is almost twice as many as last year. Children from the occupied territories went on propaganda trips to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Tula as part of the ‘Cultural Map 4+85’ and ‘Route for Youth’ programmes, ‘Route for Youth’ and ‘University Changes,’ and also took part in a series of ‘patriotic’ events, sometimes more than 8,000 kilometres from home.

As of March 31, 2025, Ukraine has confirmation of 19,546 deported Ukrainian children who were illegally taken to Russia, Belarus, and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The number of displaced children is likely to be significantly higher, but it is currently impossible to estimate the scale due to the lack of access to the temporarily occupied territories and the ongoing full-scale war. According to open sources cited by Russia, 744,000 children have been taken away. So far, joint efforts by civil society organizations and the government have managed to return 1,256 children.

A positive step towards preventing and returning deported Ukrainian children was the development of the White Paper “Protecting Children from Forced Displacement and Deportation” by the International Expert Group BringKidsBack UA. The book consistently debunks the Kremlin’s myths about so-called “evacuation” and, through international law, describes how the Russian Federation is systematically committing the crime of deportation and forced displacement of Ukrainian children. It strengthens Ukraine’s ability to develop effective international legal mechanisms for the return of abducted children and to ensure their rehabilitation and reintegration.

The regulatory framework for registering deported and forcibly displaced children in Ukraine has also been improved. In particular, in the fall of 2024, the Law of Ukraine “On the Registration of Information on Damage Caused to the Personal Non-Property Rights of Individuals as a Result of the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine” was adopted, which provides for the creation and functioning of a register of information on deported children.

The Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 1240 of October 29, 2024, which defines the mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and access to the Register of Information on Children Deported or Forcibly Displaced in Connection with the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, and its use, came into force. An Interagency Commission on the Verification of Information on Children Deported or Forcibly Displaced in Connection with the Armed Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine was established.

Furthermore, in October 2024, the Verkhovna Rada adopted Implementation Law No. 4012-IX in connection with the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and amendments thereto, according to which the deportation of children is now considered as genocide.

At the same time, there is still no single effective mechanism that allows Ukrainian children deported to Russia to be returned. The practice of returning children varies greatly – with the help of other countries, international organizations, through the offices of Ombudsmen, and often privately, when the parents or guardians themselves travel to the Russian Federation to pick up their children.

Another pressing issue is the lack of a state-run system for reintegrating kids who come back from the temporarily occupied territories, Russia, and Belarus, which should include long-term support and assistance for the kids and their families. Currently, there are only initiatives from the civil society sector to develop specific concepts for such reintegration in Ukraine, which include the involvement of social services, educational institutions, and the community as a whole in working with returned children. In fact, such children are currently cared for by the Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights and involved civil society organizations, which, where possible, meet the children’s needs for humanitarian, psychological, social, legal, educational, and other types of assistance. At the same time, with a significant return of deported children, the existing practice of assistance will not be able to cope with the load. The state has to some extent become involved in addressing this problem with the adoption of the Procedure for the identification, return, support, and reintegration of children deported or forcibly displaced as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which requires that all returned children be placed exclusively in family-based care.

As of March 31, 2025, according to the Office of General Prosecutor, a total of 161,900 crimes of aggression and war crimes committed by the Russian Federation are under investigation in Ukraine. As of September 2024, about 4,000 criminal proceedings are related to crimes against children. The largest number of proceedings are in the Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson regions. They concern cases of abduction and deprivation of liberty, forced deportation, and sexual violence. Fifty-four people have been notified of suspicion of war crimes against children. Investigations have been completed in 44 cases and the cases have been referred to court. Thirty-one war criminals have been convicted.

Among the positive steps taken, it is worth noting the pilot projects in the field of juvenile justice. In November 2024, a pilot project was launched in Ukraine to specialize judges in family and children’s cases. Its goal is to introduce child-friendly justice. Nearly 60 judges will undergo training. The pilot project is being implemented by the All-Ukrainian Public Center “Volunteer” in cooperation with the Civil Cassation Court within the Supreme Court and the Interagency Coordination Council on Juvenile Justice, with the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine. It is expected that the consideration of cases by specialized judges with in-depth knowledge of children’s rights and the age and psychological characteristics of children’s development will ensure the proper protection of the rights and well-being of every child who comes into contact with the justice system, considering their needs and life situation. It may also significantly speed up the consideration of the cases related to ensuring the right of the child to a family.

In addition, another pilot project initiated by the Interagency Coordination Council on Juvenile Justice, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, and the All-Ukrainian Public Center “Volunteer” with the support of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Ukraine has proven effective. Since autumn 2024, the project has been operating throughout Ukraine. It provides for the establishment of a register of psychologists who are involved in criminal proceedings involving children. The database greatly facilitates the search for the necessary specialists in the regions and ensures that the best interests of the child are respected during proceedings involving children.

Training for juvenile investigators remains essential, especially in relation to war crimes. Currently, there are almost no such investigators, and all law enforcement agencies are generally overburdened, with hundreds or even thousands of cases to handle at the same time.

It should also be noted that in early 2025, an important and positive decision for Ukraine was the appointment by the Council of Europe of a Special Representative on Ukrainian Children to draw attention to the problems they face, as well as to standards and initiatives aimed at supporting them. Her powers also include coordinating international cooperation and interaction with structures such as the Register of Damages and the Advisory Group on Children in Ukraine.

A detailed picture of administrative practice of abduction and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia is presented in the judgement in the case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia[3]. What is important that the ECtHR considered the period starting from 2014 for the needs of a broader picture of crimes committed by Russian agents or other persons under the control of Russian agents.

The Court found undisputed that in the summer of 2014, three groups of a total of 85 residents of children’s homes in eastern Ukraine were escorted by armed “DPR” and “LPR” representatives across the Ukrainian-Russian border, on three separate dates and from different parts of the “DPR” and “LPR”[4].

The Court found undisputed that children from the “DPR”, the “LPR” and subsequently from other occupied territory were removed to the Russian Federation or to other occupied areas in Ukraine, separated from their legal caregivers and prevented from reuniting with them. Indeed, the evidence establishes clearly that there were such transfers in the “DPR” and the “LPR” shortly before the invasion, as purported “evacuation” measures.

In the following months, countless children from institutions and children attending holiday camps were transferred to Russia from occupied territory and were subsequently unable to return to their homes in Ukraine. Some were retained in holiday camps, while others were placed in foster care with Russian families across various regions in Russia and adopted once they acquired Russian nationality.

Numerous public statements by Russian officials do not dispute the mass removal of children from Ukraine and the ongoing presence of such children in Russia. The Commission of Inquiry was able to review the transfers of 195 such children. The “DPR authorities” themselves said that “all children previously in ‘DPR’ institutions” had been removed to Russia by July 2022. The Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights has claimed that 2,000 children arrived in Russia in February 2022 alone. The portal operated by the Ukrainian Government recorded that, by 30 September 2022 a total of 7,890 children had been removed from[5].

The Commission of Inquiry and the OSCE Moscow Mechanism mission experts concluded that in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv regions, the displacement of children was an organised process. Their reports concluded that the transfers were not justified by safety or medical reasons and lacked proper consent from the children’s legal caregivers. They further found that subsequent actions and omissions by the Russian authorities prevented the children’s reunification with their legal caregivers. The evidence shows that parents in Ukraine were not provided with information concerning their children’s location in Russia and that where contact was re-established it was often through coincidence or luck[6].

At the same time, Russian officials put in place dedicated legislative and policy measures for the removal and placement of Ukrainian children in Russia. Removal of allegedly orphaned Ukrainian children from Ukraine was carried out by the Russian armed forces and authorities, including by the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights in person as well as by “DPR” and “LPR” armed groups, in coordination with the “DPR” and “LPR” “child protection authorities”. Once across the border, Russian authorities at federal and regional level accommodated the children in hospitals, social institutions or “camps” throughout. The trips were typically funded by Russia’s regional and republican governments, under the so-called “patronage” system. Official statements referred to the support of President Putin himself to the placement of Ukrainian children in Russian families[7].

The Russian Federation made it easier for Ukrainian children to acquire Russian citizenship and be adopted by Russian families. After 24 February 2022 children born in occupied territory were issued Russian birth certificates and Russian nationality. This practice was subsequently formalised with the annexation of the four Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in October 2022. Perceived to be Russian citizens, children from occupied territory in Ukraine could be adopted by Russian families from anywhere in Russia. The evidence indicates that they were listed for adoption or foster care in Russia[8].

It has been widely reported, and confirmed in the activity reports of her mandate, that the Russian Federation’s Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights, spearheaded a wide range of initiatives aimed at transferring and accommodating Ukrainian children in the Russian Federation. She herself travelled to the Russian-controlled territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to coordinate the transfers and placements of children in Russian families. She also accompanied a group of children to Russia and reported on more groups of children being ready to travel to Russia for placement in Russian families. She further adopted a child from Mariupol herself. On 17 March 2023 a pre-trial chamber of the ICC issued arrest warrants for her and for President Putin, charging them with the war crime of unlawful deportation of children and that of unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation[9].

Finally, the Court concluded that there was the movement of numerous children across the border between Ukraine and the Russian Federation between 2014 and 2018. It can be inferred from the regular presence of vehicles and personnel of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and the preparations for, and carrying out of, medical checks that the transfers were organised by the Russian Federation and involved significant logistical arrangements[10].

Evacuations may be carried out only in case of “imperative military reasons” or for the “safety of the population”; within the bounds of occupied territory unless impossible; and only temporarily. There are extensive procedural rules concerning the need for written consent from parents or legal guardians and the obligation to make arrangements to facilitate the return and reunification with their families of evacuated children. Changes in their personal status are prohibited.

However, the Russian Government has not provided evidence that the children’s removal from Ukraine in the circumstances complied with any of these provisions. There was nothing to show that any of the purported evacuations of children were carried out for the reasons provided for by international humanitarian law. It is also significant that the essence of the present complaint is that the children were transferred from occupied territory to the Russian Federation, which is in clear breach of international humanitarian law in the absence of evidence showing that transfer within occupied territory would have been impossible.

The Russian Government did not implement any measures to secure the return to Ukraine and the family reunification of children purportedly evacuated, and no such measures are described in the various reports before it.

On the contrary, numerous credible reports identify cases where Ukrainian children were themselves left to try to contact their parents, often with the manifest non-cooperation of the persons in whose custody they were. The policy put in place for the mass acquisition of Russian nationality by children in occupied areas after the 2022 invasion, in breach of international humanitarian law, was nothing less than the automatic imposition of Russian.

As a result, the Court concluded that, given the evidence of changes to nationality and adoption in the Russian Federation, the children’s transfer to Russia cannot be seen as a temporary measure. Considering these considerations, the children’s transfer from Ukraine to the Russian Federation would not appear to qualify as lawful “evacuation” under international humanitarian law.

Making conclusions to the analysed problems of the impact of the War on children, it is reasonable to draw the following recommendations:

1. To ensure that all crimes committed by Russian military personnel against Ukrainian children are recorded: murders, mutilations, cruel treatment of children, and others.

2. To engage international partners to monitor the situation of children who have been deported to Russia and their return to Ukraine or departure to third safe countries.

3. To apply child-friendly justice approaches, including training the necessary number of relevant specialists.

4. To standardise at the legislative level the juvenile specialisation of the police, prosecutors, judges, and probation services.

5. To develop a clear algorithm for the reintegration of children affected by the War, in particular those returned from deportation and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. 6. To disseminate recommendations for parents and educators on identifying potential risks of child recruitment and protecting children from negative influences.

[1] Oliinyk, T. (2025). Teenagers detained in Zhytomyr for blowing up two men on orders from Russia. Ukrainska Pravda. August 7, 2025. Source: www.pravda.com.ua/news/2025/08/7/7525174

[2] Shurmakevich V. (2025) Only in 2025, the Russian Federation sent almost 11,000 Ukrainian children to re-education camps. Ukrainska Pravda. September 12, 2025. Source: https://life.pravda.com.ua/society/u-2025-roci-rosiyani-vivezli-do-taboriv-mayzhe-11-tisyach-ukrajinskih-ditey-310271/

[3] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025

[4] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1569.

[5] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1573.

[6] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1574.

[7] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1575.

[8] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1577.

[9] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1578.

[10] Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia [GC], applications № 43800/14, 8019/16, 28525/20 et al., judgment 09.07.2025. Para 1582.

Andrii Chernousov

PhD in Sociology, Vice-Chair (Kharkiv Institute for Social Research)

Ukraine’s law enforcement system, particularly before the Revolution of Dignity and during the early post-Soviet period, was deeply corrupt, inheriting many flaws from the Soviet system. The following characteristics and factors contributed to its systemic corruption:

Elite and Petty Corruption: Corruption permeated all levels of law enforcement. High-ranking officials engaged in elite corruption, such as embezzlement of state resources or protecting powerful criminal networks for personal gain. Meanwhile, petty corruption was rampant among lower-level officers, who frequently demanded bribes from citizens for routine services like traffic stops, permits, or avoiding minor penalties.

Infiltration by Organized Crime: The system was heavily infiltrated by organized crime, facilitated by corruption. Criminal groups often bribed or collaborated with police, prosecutors, and judges, creating networks that protected illegal activities like drug trafficking, extortion, and smuggling. This blurred the line between law enforcement and criminal enterprises.

Clan-Based Networks and Cronyism: Law enforcement operated through clan-like structures, where loyalty to personal networks trumped professional duty. Police chiefs, prosecutors, and judges often shared economic interests, forming tight-knit groups that prioritized mutual benefit over justice. Nepotism ensured that positions were filled based on connections rather than merit.

Soviet-Style Bureaucracy and Centralization: The system inherited a rigid, centralized structure from the Soviet era, with the Ministry of Internal Affairs holding near-absolute control. This monopolized power, concentrated in the hands of politically appointed figures, made the system prone to abuse and reduced accountability. Decentralization or independent oversight was virtually non-existent.

Low Salaries and Poor Infrastructure:  Officers were underpaid. It made them susceptible to bribery as a means of supplementing income. Inadequate funding also led to outdated equipment, poor training facilities, and dilapidated infrastructure, further demoralizing the force and fostering a culture of corruption to compensate for resource shortages.

Soviet Rudimentary Education and Training: Training for law enforcement was outdated, rooted in Soviet-era practices that emphasized control over service. Officers were often ill-equipped to handle modern policing challenges, relying on intimidation or corrupt practices rather than professional skills.

Lack of Public Trust: Systemic corruption eroded public confidence, as citizens viewed police as predatory rather than protective. This lack of trust discouraged cooperation with law enforcement, perpetuating a cycle where police relied on coercion or bribes to maintain authority.

For years, Ukrainian Society had been demanding fair, human-centered, and transparent law enforcement institutions, but these requests went largely unfulfilled, leaving anachronism, cronyism, and systemic corruption entrenched. Ukrainians saw the police forces as their primary function – to serve as the state’s primary security guardians, tasked with protecting people and property through public assistance, law enforcement, crime identification, investigation, prevention, and maintaining peaceful public order. As the frontline of state security, they are the most visible institution that citizens encounter daily.

The 2005-2012 Georgia’s police reforms set a tone for some other neighbouring countries. It was remarkably successful and widely recognized. By eradicating corruption, organized crime (largely known as ‘thieves-in-Law’ mafia style soviet tradition), nepotism, and clan-based structures, Georgia laid a foundation for progress and the rule of law. In fact, many post-Soviet republics sought to emulate this model, but the absence of political will often hindered their efforts, diluting the commitment and spirit needed for meaningful reform.

Following Ukraine’s Dignity Revolution, reforming law enforcement became essential not only for societal trust but also for the country’s development. It was vital to fill the abyss of the Ukrainian public’s lack of confidence in the state Institutions, undermining feelings of safety, protection of businesses and private property, child safety, and adherence to human rights standards. Without the rule of law, a democratic society cannot exist, nor can it thrive without safeguarding human and property rights — core responsibilities of state institutions, particularly the police. Inspired by Georgia’s success, President Poroshenko’s government sought to replicate these reforms post-revolution. Police reform became a pathway to establishing the rule of law, gaining Euro-Atlantic support, and securing political backing. The Government understood that without law enforcement and anticorruption reforms, it would be difficult to acquire Western support and technical assistance.

The task required a near-complete overhaul of the law enforcement system, focusing on eliminating corruption, reducing crime, combating organized crime, earning public trust, protecting human and property rights, and maintaining public order. Achieving these goals was possible but depended heavily on the state and political leaders’ commitment, expressed through political will? It is not a specific law or individual but a unified government approach ensuring impartial law enforcement and punishment, simplified regulations, reduced bureaucracy, and efficient service delivery to citizens. Political will is essential to declare corruption as a common enemy and prioritize transparent institutions to expose hidden financial flows. It was important for Ukraine’s law enforcement, which was plagued by elite and petty corruption, infiltration by organized crime, bureaucratic inefficiencies, Soviet-style rudimentary education, clan-based networks linking prosecutors, judges, and police chiefs through shared economic interests, low salaries, and poor infrastructure.

In 2012, Georgia’s elections saw pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili defeat reformist, pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili. Legal cases were launched against Saakashvili and his allies. As a reform expert, Saakashvili was invited to Ukraine, catalysing the import of Georgia’s police reform model. The Soviet-inherited, highly centralized, and monopolized police system, controlled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, lacked decentralization or checks and balances.  In Ukraine, this was exemplified by the powerful Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, whose political influence overshadowed institutional autonomy. President Poroshenko and Minister Avakov were “kind” enemies. Nowadays, I can admit that the Minister of Internal Affairs, with its enormous forces, was more influential than the President of Ukraine. At least, he used his power effectively. Police forces typically included traffic police, the first responders to crime, criminal police for investigation and operations, special forces, and crowd control units. But the Minister was more powerful than a police chief; he obtained an institutional control over the National Guard. The new National Guard absorbed the Interior Ministry’s ‘Internal Troops’ and volunteer battalions. The National Guard functioned as a territorial defence and support to the Armed Forces during wartime, civilian law enforcement: guarding government buildings, managing protests, and protecting critical infrastructure and forces during civilian unrest. Possessing control over the National Guard was one of the issues of controversy between the President and the Minister from different political groups.

The first wave of reform targeted the patrol police, abolishing the corrupt Soviet-era traffic police and establishing a modern, prevention-focused patrol police department.

Key factors included:

• a transparent recruitment system with rigorous vetting;
• modern tactical and intellectual training;
• geographic redistribution for patrolling;
• new uniforms and equipment;
• decent salaries and social benefits.

The appointment of Eka Zguladze as Avakov’s deputy kickstarted the patrol police reform, supported significantly by the U.S. ICITAP (International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program, a specialized initiative of the U.S. Department of Justice. Since its founding in 1986, ICITAP has played a pivotal role in helping foreign governments build professional, transparent, and rights-respecting law enforcement institutions.) program, which focused on recruitment.

The process involved vacancy announcements, strict criteria, general and psychological testing, physical assessments, and competitive salaries with social benefits. During the recruitment of patrol officers, candidates underwent specialized psychological testing, which constituted a critical element of the selection process. These assessments were designed to evaluate emotional resilience, ethical judgment, and the capacity to perform under pressure – qualities essential for building public trust and ensuring professional conduct in law enforcement. The integration of psychological screening marked a departure from previous practices and reflected a broader commitment to institutional reform and modernization.

Ultimately, the patrol police reform succeeded, mobilising nearly 15,000 new recruits. Training occurred at the Interior Ministry’s academy, not as higher education but as intensive, U.S.-style courses lasting a few months, with tactics developed by American police experts. Within six months, Kyiv’s patrol police department was operational. The emphasis on young, patriotic officers was key, as reforming the old, corrupt system was deemed impossible.

In December 2015, Ukraine’s National Police was established—a legislative step forward, though insufficient. The law didn’t grant the National Police chief enough independence from the politically appointed Interior Minister. Despite debates in the Verkhovna Rada, the law was a compromise, leaving the Interior Ministry dominant and the police with limited autonomy. After the patrol police’s success, the focus shifted to the criminal police, a more resistant and sensitive area due to its entrenched clan-based structures and cronyism.

The public trust in the Patrol Police increased to 60%, but the main challenge remained the vetting (attestation) process of former militia officers. My idea was that without passing attestation, former militia officers should not be allowed to be appointed to the Police staff. The main challenge was a political one. Heads of departments and regional districts had been too influential and tied to the different political figures to be vetted properly. The commissions reviewed approximately seventy thousand former Militia and fired over five thousand, or nine percent of police in 2016.

The Central Commission consists of five members:

• Two representatives appointed by the Minister of Internal Affairs.
• One – nominated by the Chief of Police.
• Two public representatives recommended by the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights – chosen from persons with impeccable reputation, strong professional standards.

As you have seen, the balance in the commissions was in favour of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The same principle was at the different cities where all regional Militia had been vetted. The vetting process was accompanied by a huge scandal. One of the scandals was the firing of a Head Anti-Drug Unit – Ilia Kyva, who later betrayed Ukraine and escaped to Russia. It was a symbol of the broader struggle between reform and entrenched figures from the political clans covered by the Influential Minister. Vetting faced lots of criticism.

The vetting process was met with profound systemic resistance. Former members of the militia organized demonstrations, issued personal insults, and made threats. The persistence of double standards and impunity within the police force could not be overcome without a high degree of independence in the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office. One of the most detrimental outcomes of the vetting process was the legal reinstatement of dismissed officials, which ultimately undermined and halted the reform of the criminal police.

Regional police chiefs could neither be dismissed nor appointed without the direct involvement of the Minister, reflecting the centralised nature of decision-making. Legislative progress was severely hindered due to the absence of political support in the Verkhovna Rada, where reform initiatives lacked both allies and a dedicated parliamentary faction. The reform agenda was overshadowed by significant political interests at play.

A functional internal audit service was never established. The prosecutor’s office operated primarily in pursuit of its own institutional interests. Given that both the Prosecutor General and the Minister of Internal Affairs were political appointees, the police frequently served as a tool of political influence rather than as an impartial law enforcement body.

Ultimately, Ukrainian society expected more than I was able to deliver, as the reform did not reach its full potential. Nevertheless, I believe that the most significant component of the police reform – the patrol police – was genuinely felt by the public.

The level of engagement from international donors and civil society was unprecedented. This collaborative effort laid the foundation for a new model of public service, one that prioritized transparency, accountability, and citizen trust.

During Russia’s full-scale invasion, both the patrol police and the reformed criminal police demonstrated that the protection of citizens and patriotic commitment were paramount. Their response under crisis conditions reaffirmed the core values of the reform and highlighted the resilience and dedication of Ukraine’s law enforcement institutions.

Khatia Dekanoidze

• Member of Parliament of Georgia
• Minister of Education and Science of Georgia (2012)
• Chief of the National Police of Ukraine (2015–2016)