Can I make it so users can only assign items to themselves?

[Sam Newman]

I have a project where it is common for people to reassign things to someone else without communicating about it first. This causes a myriad of problems. I'd like to try restricting the assignment field so people can only reassign items to themselves to push people to communicate about it before the reassignment can happen. 

Is this possible? 

[Raffaele Ziraldo]

I made the following automation rule to workaround this problem:

In my case I want that users in role "SW Developer" would be able to assign the issue to themselves only.
The "SW Developer" can see all the assignable users but if it assigns the issue to another user (not itself) the rule immediately reverts the change assigning the issue to the previous assignee.
Other "power" users (SW Engineer,...) can assign to any assignable user.

[Mikael Sandberg]

Restricting who can assign via the permission scheme would not solve it, unless you only want a specific user to assign all the issues. Instead you should educate your users to not reassign without a warm handoff. And if it happens then have the new assignee kick the issue back to the original assignee. You could also create controls around it to verify that the process is followed. 

[Paul O]

You can restrict the ability to assign issues via the project permission scheme.  See: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/managing-project-permissions-938847145.html  issue permissions section