The Mandatur Service and Its Tasks
The Ministry of Education creates within its system a public-law legal entity — the Educational Institution Resource Officer Service (the mandatur service). Its tasks are ensuring safety and public order in public schools and cooperating with public schools for that purpose, and, on the basis of contracts, ensuring safety and public order in general education institutions founded as private-law entities and in the public-law entities within the ministry's system. The service also provides psychosocial services to students with behavioral and emotional disorders and special educational needs, to students of further and vocational education, and to their parents; provides psychological services to teachers; coordinates the psychologists working in the ministry's territorial bodies and public schools; participates in planning and implementing catastrophe preparedness measures, healthy-lifestyle promotion, and educational campaigns against violence, including bullying; identifies the need for safety-related trainings and organizes them; and issues recommendations to schools on safety matters.
General leadership and control of the service's activity is exercised by the minister. The service cooperates with the Ministry of Internal Affairs for information exchange and for planning various preventive measures. Personal data are processed by the service only to the extent and within the time needed for the purposes of psychosocial services and psycho-educational assessment, in accordance with the law on personal data protection.
Requirements for Appointment as a Mandatur
A mandatur of an educational institution may be a Georgian citizen with full legal capacity and no conviction, who has turned 21 years of age, has full general education and vocational or higher education, knows the state language, has a health condition appropriate for performing official duties, and has completed the preparation courses approved by a joint order of the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Minister of Education. Those courses, together with other teaching components, must take into account the regularities of a student's age development, the mandatur's professional obligations and values, and physical preparation and practical components. The mandatur is appointed and dismissed by the head of the mandatur service, and while performing official duties wears a service uniform approved by the minister.
Cases of Using Physical Force
A mandatur has the right to use physical force only in an extreme case, when performing the official duty is impossible through milder measures, and the force used must be proportionate to the danger that has arisen. The law names three cases: first, when suppressing an offense; second, when danger threatens the life and/or health of persons in the institution and on its adjacent territory; and third, in a case provided by legislation, when detaining an offender for transfer to a law enforcement body, where there is a sufficient basis for the presumption that the person will hide or cause harm to those around.
The Procedure for Using Physical Force
When using force, the mandatur has strict duties. First, the person must be warned about the use of physical force and given sufficient time to comply with the demands — except where delay would endanger the life and health of the mandatur or other persons, would cause other grave consequences, or where warning is impossible. Second, force must be applied according to the nature of the danger, with the consideration that the harm inflicted must be minimal, and no danger may be created to the life and health of those around. Third, in every case, within 24 hours of the use of physical force, the ministry must be notified in writing, through the head of the mandatur service. This last guarantee is particularly important: every episode becomes known to the authorities and is subject to review.
Rights and Duties of the Mandatur at School
The mandatur's range of rights and duties at school is broad. The mandatur controls the order of the institution and its adjacent territory, suppresses offenses committed and revealed there and informs the law enforcement bodies; at the request of the board of trustees, the pedagogical council, the directorate, or a teacher, works with students who have social behavior problems — talks with them individually and observes their behavior; provides students with information on civil defense, road traffic safety, administrative offenses and crimes and their consequences; informs parents and the authorized person of the institution about the behavior of students with social behavior problems; during a catastrophe facilitates the protection and evacuation of students and other persons and participates in preparedness planning, training, and implementation.
Additionally, the mandatur performs the role of mediator between confronted students and participates in identifying and resolving the conflict; attends meetings with the parents of students with social behavior problems; independently or together with the administration maintains order and discipline on the institution's territory; draws up a violation registration sheet in the form approved by the ministry and submits it to the authorized person and to the head of the mandatur service; creates an electronic information database of violations revealed in the institution; administers the video surveillance system of a general education institution; separates a student in the cases provided by law; and conducts a non-contact surface inspection with the use of a metal detector for discovering items prohibited by law, instruments of a suspected offense, objects bearing its traces, items and values obtained by it, and objects and documents needed to clarify the circumstances. A separate, significant duty: the mandatur is obliged to provide information to the person authorized by the school director about a possible fact of violence against women and/or domestic violence, if a danger of repetition of violence exists. In exercising these rights and duties, the mandatur cooperates with the school and, upon invitation, attends sessions of its structural units and expresses opinions on matters within its competence.
Legal Protection of the Mandatur
While performing official duties, the mandatur is protected by law, and compliance with his or her lawful demand is mandatory for every student. No one has the right to interfere in the mandatur's official activity except in cases provided by law. Obstructing the mandatur, insulting his or her honor and dignity, offering resistance, threatening, using violence, or encroaching on his or her life, health, or property entails the responsibility provided by Georgian legislation. To defend his or her rights and freedoms, the mandatur has the right to apply to court.
Referral of a Minor with Difficult Behavior
The law regulates the execution and review of a decision to send a minor to a referral institution for minors. Execution of the decision is ensured by the minor's legal representative or factual custodian; if that person does not execute the decision within the term indicated by the court, it is executed by the authorized person of the referral institution with the participation of the state care agency — the Legal Entity under Public Law subordinated to the Ministry for Internally Displaced Persons, Labor, Health and Social Affairs — on the basis of an application of the referral center for minors.
The review of the decision works as follows: before the expiry of the minor's term of stay in the institution, no later than 15 calendar days prior, the institution's authorized person presents to a group of specialists, in accordance with the procedure determined by the referral center, information about the positive results achieved by the minor and the existing difficulties. On the basis of the information received from the institution and, where necessary, conversations with the minor and other persons, the group of specialists is entitled — no later than 15 calendar days from the application addressed to it — to decide on terminating, changing, or extending the measure applied to the minor.