Comparative Justice Journal

Comparative Justice Journal 1

Hunter D. Braun

Fort Hays State University

Comparative Justice Journal 1

Summarize the Event.

The event that I am covering is the arrest of grieving relatives and two journalist that were covering a memorial event for the Beslan School Massacre. The Beslan School Massacre happened on September 1, 2004 when terrorists stormed the building and took over 1000 hostages. Over half the hostages were children and the siege lasted 3 days and ended after Russian troops stormed the building. 186 children were killed in the massacre. The relatives that were at the memorial revealed shirts that said Putin- Butcher of Beslan. They were moved from the event and put in a corner to hold. They were wearing those shirts because of all the criticisms Putin has been under because of the heavy fire the troops used when storming the building including tanks and even flamethrowers. They were told they were disturbing a public event and then taken to the station. The two journalists were arrested because of some irregularities in their passports. I chose this event because it shows how different this country is from ours. People in this country don’t have freedom of speech and were arrested for showing what they thought. This event was important because it was relatives of slayed children that were arrested at a memorial event for speaking out about the event as a whole and what they really thought. It was a big deal in Russia too covering front pages of newspapers in the surrounding area.

Structure of the Russian Police1

The structure of the Russian Police is similar to the United States. There is a hierarchy in place is similar to the one we have here except they have some different names and that they are called troops. Being there longer, you go up in rank. You start out as a private like in the USA but the last rank is the Marshal of Russian Federation. There are around 782,000 police officers in Russia so it’s a pretty big police force.

Culture of the Russian police. In Russia, the police are generally not extremely likeable. A simple search for Russian police brutality brings up tons of videos and articles about everything from torture in the prisons to accidental deaths that were caused by the police. Bribery and corruption are also heavy in the Russian police force. The Russian police are not paid very much either so this adds to the corruption and bribes received by the police in Russia. According to multiple articles, Russian police can also become violent very fast if you do not go with their orders. After looking for a while, the only good thing I could find was that they are usually gentler with foreigners than they are with Russian citizens.

Crime and Police Statistics.   There are plenty of interesting crime rates in Russia. Over 82% of the people living in Russia believe or know that there is a bribery problem. Russia also has 2.95 million crimes a year. Only 34% of the country feels safe walking by themselves at night. Almost half of the country thinks crime is getting worse.

Comparisons to the United States.  Russian Police and American Police could be compared to each other in a few ways. First of all, Russia’s ranking system within the police force is very similar to the American ranking system having many of the same ranks as each other. Also, the system used to give out citations in both countries are similar. On another note, Capital punishment rates in both countries are generally close too.