CERTAIN ASPECTS OF POLICE WORK IN COMBATING IRREGULAR MIGRATION AND PEOPLE SMUGGLING
Keywords:
cross-border crime, police, irregular migrations, human smuggling, proactivity.Abstract
In the past decade, a new proactive approach has been established in the work of the Serbian police. This approach is based on making strategic decisions founded on detailed crime analysis and threat assessments of severe forms of crime. During this period, two strategic documents were created relating to the assessment of public safety conditions and three documents related to the assessment of threats from serious and organized crime. In all strategic documents, one of the priorities identified is the area of crime related to human smuggling and irregular migrations, which are closely connected to this type of criminal activity. The subject of this paper is the role of the border police in combating cross-border crime and irregular migrations, with a particular focus on one form of cross-border crime: human smuggling. Specifically, human smuggling through the territory of Serbia has become particularly significant since the beginning of armed conflicts in Syria in 2011 and the subsequent displacement of a large number of residents from the war-torn area. Irregular migrants from that and other Asian areas, also affected by armed conflicts, attempt to reach the most economically developed countries of Western Europe via the Western Balkan route with the help of smugglers. In this paper, we will present the strategic and tactical measures taken by the Serbian police to counter this form of crime and provide a statistical analysis of the number of people convicted of human smuggling from 2018 to 2022.
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