PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF ENSURING PUBLIC SAFETY AND ORDER BY THE NATIONAL POLICE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The problematic issues of the content of the concept of “public safety and order” have been outlined. It has been stressed that nowadays these concepts are not widespread in legal terminology, and the legislator simultaneously uses both concepts without demarcating them, which leads to the collision in the field of ensuring public safety and order.

Components, factors of influence and forms of ensuring public safety and order have been considered. Public safety has been defined as the state of protection of vital interests of security objects (a person, society, country) from the threats and dangers of social, natural or man-made genesis, as well as the ability of security entities to take measures to prevent their occurrence and to eliminate negative consequences by the way of the establishment, implementation and observance of legal norms. The key psychological aspects of ensuring public safety and order have been revealed, in particular, by the National Police of Ukraine as the leading subject of such an activity.

Two areas of research in this field have been emphasized: psychology of safety in the system of “man – environment” and psychology of ensuring public safety and order by police officers. In the first case, the object of the study is the psychological factors that influence the process and the result of human activities associated with the danger, in the second – the psychological support of the activities of the subjects of public safety.

It has been concluded that the task of improving the psychological provision of the activities of the police institution in the context of new challenges and tasks of the department’s reform acquires a special urgency. This requires a thorough analysis of the practice of the National Police activities, its certain units and officers, whose activities, in particular, are aimed at ensuring public safety and order, studying the impact of the conditions of the professional environment on the psyche of police officers, taking into account the specifics of certain areas of law enforcement activity.