‘Police volunteering’ in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The sustainability of the security activities in Europe currently faces a number of challenges, including budgetary and personnel pressures. Policing activities are not an exception in this respect. One position when it comes to standards relating to local public order affairs may be the involvement of the wider police family, including police volunteers. The study deals with both a certain theoretical framework of the topic and the role of security, especially police volunteering in the new European Union Member States. In doing so, it is monitored to what extent the career of police volunteers is exposed to the competition of volunteer firefighters or military-oriented volunteer groups. The situation in all 13 states is monitored and compared. At the same time, it was identified that not all volunteer projects are linked to the state – but that some potentially problematic vigilante structures are also taking place in this regard. As a result, in relation to the monitored countries, there was also an effort to find out whether it is possible to typologize the situation – with regard to security or police volunteerism in a certain way.

Keywords

• Extended police family
• volunteering
• Central and Eastern Europe
• local public order affairs
• Robert Read, Economics, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, United Kingdom
• Military & Strategic Studies