A Sense of Responsibility as a Predictor of Law Enforcement Officers’ Personal and Professional Growth

Introduction. Responsibility and independence of an individual determine the internal need for decision-making, activity, initiative. These phenomena are discordant with arrangement of service in law enforcement agencies. The objective of the research is to study the comprehension of responsibility by law enforcement officers as the basis of an active professional position, to specify the determinants of their avoidance of taking initiative decisions. Materials and Methods. The authors analyze psychological literature devoted to the problem under study, the phenomenon “responsibility” as the basic property of an individual being examined. An empirical study was conducted among law enforcement officers serving in positions of private and command staff from 1 to 25 years, 158 respondents in total, using the authors’ questionnaire. To process the collected data, the Microsoft Excel office program and methods of descriptive statistics were employed. Based on the survey data, a phenomenological analysis was implemented. Results and Discussion. The essence of the sense of responsibility as one of the basic properties of the personality is considered, the correlation of responsibility with the independence and freedom of an individual, the interdependence of responsibility and initiative activity being analyzed. Under discussion are such professionally important qualities for law enforcement service as initiative, readiness to make independent decisions, the need for freedom. Conclusions. More than three-fourths of the surveyed respondents reject freedom of choice, are unwilling to make proactive decisions in the course of their professional activities, and are reluctant to take responsibility for the consequences of such decisions. Taking these factors into account in the psychological and educational work with law enforcement personnel will make it possible to influence the development of employees’ personal potential, facilitate the insurance of their professional growth, improve the quality and effectiveness of the service as a whole.