Bojan Janković

VIOLENCE PREVENTION ON SPORTING EVENTS

Summary

Hooliganism that was occurring on sporting events in the Republic of Serbia during previous period showed us that repressive methods designed to control this phenomenon were not adequate so there was a need of using the society energy, beside the intensive public debates, to start the mechanism of creating the new policy for more efficient and effective solving of this problem. After the enactment of Law on prevention of violence and misbehavior on sporting events and manifestations in 2003, it was not prevented the escalation of violent behaviour at sporting events and manifestations. Experience of other countries showed us that new rules and stricter penal policy are not enough by itselves. Parallel to criminal intelligence activities and police work and adequate court reactions in accordance with the legislator intention, other social mechanisms should be involved. In this work it has been analyzed and described intelligence methods used by the police in order to collect information on hooligans as one of the preconditions for successful combating hooliganism. It was also given statistical data analysis on level of violence on sporting events in the Republic of Serbia during past two years and it was used the results given by police officers questionnaire who gave their opinion on current situation in this field. Considering that Law on prevention of violence and misbehavior on sporting events and manifestations has not completely solved the problem of supporter violence in our country, beside repressive measures, it is necessary to use proactive approach as much as possible and priority should be given to the preventive measures. This paper is focused to the mentioned preventive measures concerning work with supporters, not only by police forces, but other social factors as well. They should be applied to overcome current, not very nice situation, off course, not excluding fully repressive measures.

Key words: prevention, violence, sporting events, police, fans