28
police exchange programs, and to observe how the police work on domestic violence
issues in these countries.
Other Projects
The three organizations highlighted here do not, of course, represent the only
examples of law enforcement-civil society engagement in Russia. There are many other
examples of similar work. Project Harmony is a U.S.-based police reform NGO that has
police exchanges between multiple American and Russian cities, with a particular
emphasis on community policing issues. The Moscow Center for Prison Reform has had
particularly good luck working with the Ministry of Justice, which oversees the prison
system. Representatives from civil society organizations serve on regional pardon
commissions in at least Saint Petersburg and Novosibirsk, and I imagine elsewhere as
well. Women’s NGOs played a role in working with the Duma and the Presidential
Administration, as well as foreign governments such as the United States, in pushing
through legislation to crack down on human trafficking. Throughout Siberia there are
NGOs working with state law-enforcement organs on such issues as juvenile offenders
and rehabilitating former prisoners. Most of these projects have some element of
“bottom up, inside out” reform to them.
60
It is also worth mentioning the ombudsman institution in Russia, which exists
both at the national level as well as in 27 regions. Although this institution is a state one
60
Project Harmony Community Policing website: http://cpti.projectharmony.ru/; Moscow Center for
Prison Reform website: http://www.prison.org/; Author’s interview with Valeriy Abramkin, Director of the
Moscow Center for Prison Reform, Moscow, 20 March 2003; Author’s interview with Andrei
Konstantinov, Agency for Journalistic Investigations, Saint Petersburg, 17 December 2002; Author’s
interwiew with Igor’ Gall-Saval’skiy, Director, Novosibirsk Oblast Branch of the All-Russian Society of
Invalids, Novosibirsk, 25 June 2003; Thomas Firestone, “The Russian Connection: Sex Trafficking into the
United States and What the United States and Russia Are Doing About It,” International Organized Crime,
51, 5 (September 2003), 39-42; Author’s interview with Thomas Firestone, Department of Justice, U.S.
Convention