The fight against organized crime still does not provide results that can be considered sustainable and deterring for criminal groups from Montenegro or organizing their operations on its territory.
Some of the key challenges relate to the work of the public and secret police, whose insufficient proactivity and complete absence of internal control continue to go mostly in favour of organized criminal groups. The latest data (the case of Lazović and Milović) support the long-standing suspicions about the inflow of criminal groups into the very top of the police organization, precisely the part that was in charge of the fight against organized crime on behalf of the state. In this way, the efforts invested in the reform of the police are completely meaningless.
The situation is similar with the judiciary and the State Prosecutor’s Office, which are proven to be one of the weakest links in the fight against organized crime in Montenegro. The general lack of accountability that has been characteristic of the Montenegrin judiciary for decades has resulted in Montenegro being placed in the international community as the “mafia state” and a place where criminals, as a rule, are acquitted of most serious crimes.
When it comes to the State Prosecutor’s Office, indictments that are easily overturned in court, plea agreements that are “freely interpreted” and years of exhausting investigations that do not result in indictments, have been for years the first thing that come to mind when it comes to work of the Montenegrin prosecutor’s organization.
Mild and uneven penal policy additionally confirms the fact that Montenegrin society has not yet provided an adequate response to the problem of organized crime.
Official data show that apart from the quick conclusion of plea agreements, courts often prescribe sentences even for the most serious crimes that neither have the ambition to act as a preventive measure and deter others from committing crimes, nor do they send a message to the public that justice has been served.
One of the key challenges in the fight against organized crime is continuously insufficient general transparency of the responsible state authorities (the police, the State Prosecutor’s Office, the judiciary), as well as access to data that would enable independent and objective control of the work of these institutions.
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