From November 28th – 29th 2012, UNODC, KONTRAS, the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Jakarta and the Indonesian police were carrying out a much-noticed workshop on Good Policing. This event aimed to achieve:

1. Presentation and dissemination of the handbook on democratic police work, which had been elaborated by HSF and ASEF, as well as the recently published guidelines for responsible police work.
2. Development of an action plan for the work of police officers on the sub district level which should be oriented towards the principles of democratic police work under consideration of human rights.
3. Elaboration of suggestions for a structural and managerial reform of the Indonesian police with a special focus on police officers who are in regular contact with the Indonesian citizens.
4. Support of the Indonesian police for fighting illegal logging and corruption of Indonesian forest officials.

The workshop was divided into the following sections:

Firstly, high-ranking Indonesian police officials and the Head of HSF Indonesia have delivered opening remarks. Those were followed by a panel discussion with the following topics:

• Management of a democratic police work: instruments, models, examples
• Management of a democratic police work form the human right’s point of view
• Management of good police work: responsible and ethical work

These topics have been discussed intensely, whereas the discussion was mainly lead by high-ranking police officials from Jakarta instead of the actual target group, namely police officials from the sub district level (Kapolsek).

However, this changed with the group work with the participating police officials form the sub district level. The results of this group work have disclosed the problems and challenges that these police officials are facing in their everyday work. This disclosure led to conclusions on how to improve the police work in that regard. Despite this impressive evaluation, it was – due to the hierarchical structure in the Indonesian police force – rather difficult to discuss these results with the high-ranking police officials from Jakarta. Therefore, it is crucial to change the format of this workshop in the future so that lower-ranking police officials can express their experiences and problems in a first step. Then, in a second step, the results of the first step will be discussed with the high-ranking police officials. Only then a target-oriented action plan that also includes the issue of human rights can be elaborated.