On the Need for the Education of Officers and Civilian Employees of Guarded Centres for Foreigners

Abstract

This text undertakes to turn the readers’ attention to one of the many training areas of the Border Guard and open up a discussion on the possibility to create, among the courses and training offered to the officers and civilian employees of this service, a special sub-system dedicated to people employed in detention centres. This is because even a preliminary analysis of tasks carried out by officers and civilian employees of detention centres indicates that users of this specific institutional space need to have special professional qualifications in situations involving close cultural contact. This paper highlights only a fragment of a very broad map of problems related to designing the knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as attitudes of people directly involved in the operation of these institutions. The necessity to build social processes between many social actors from such centres in the closed institutional space, and cooperation with external institutions, generate many factors hindering the performance of official tasks. For this reason, it is so vital to equip officers and civilian employees with the essential skills, abilities and knowledge so that they are able to appropriately react to the problems and needs of foreigners, and reduce the emerging threats and conflicts.