Russian police have long suffered from an image problem, with a reputation for brutality, corruption and professional incompetence.

Now a new initiative aims to turn them into model professionals who will no longer accept bribes, drink on the job or even cheat on their wives. Their transformation from corrupt cops into courteous public servants is set out in a strict code of professional ethics drawn up by the Interior Ministry.

It sets down detailed standards of conduct for all officers and warns that those who break them will bear “moral responsibility before society, fellow officers, and their conscience”. They could also face an official reprimand.

The rules set out in 27 sections cover everything from corruption and bribery to bans on swearing, crude jokes and smoking on duty. Officers are told to resist “moral untidiness”, envy of successful colleagues, alcoholism and “immoral acts”.

Police must be polite, show courtesy to women and speak grammatical Russian in dealing with the public. Correct speech was an “important indicator of police professionalism” and demonstrated an officer's intelligence and competence.

Officers are also ordered to avoid “servility to the socially successful and neglect to people of low social status”, a particular problem in Russia where the powerful and well-connected often escape arrest by threatening to cause career difficulties for officers.

Socialising with criminals is barred and bribes should be refused except where officers cannot avoid taking money as part of their investigations. They should then make sure that it ends up in state coffers rather than their pockets, the code states. Oleg Yelnikov, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said that the standards updated a code of honesty introduced in 1993, which he acknowledged had done little to change the image of the force. He agreed that many serving officers were mocking the new guidelines and considered them unenforceable.

“Of course we understand that this code presents an idealised picture of a police officer and that the ideal never happens in real life,” he said.

“But it is very helpful to draw this ideal picture as a way of showing the officer what he should strive for in his conduct, that if he takes personal responsibility then his colleagues will admire that.”

He said that the code also set ethical standards for officers in their private lives “to show that there are high standards of behaviour to live by and that everybody knows what they are”.

Polls repeatedly show widespread public disdain for the police as principally interested in taking bribes. Russian newspapers routinely report cases of police brutality and involvement of officers in criminal acts.

In one recent case, the captain of a Moscow police district was arrested after chopping off a junior officer's hand during a drunken argument. Police investigators have also been lambasted for their inability to catch criminals in high-profile cases such as the murder of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the killings in broad daylight of the lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova.

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