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Do We Trust Them? Public Opinion on Police Work in Plural Policing Environments in Central and Eastern Europe

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Trust and Legitimacy in Criminal Justice

Abstract

Although there are many studies in the field of public confidence in authorities in the West, this is still not the case in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Moreover governments and police forces lack awareness that their performance is based not only on the effective investigation of criminal offenses and maintenance of public order but also on the adoption, support, and trust that citizens show toward the police as well as toward other stakeholders of the expanding security/police community. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze existing research findings on public confidence in policing bodies from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and to draw attention to gaps that still exist in this field that are typical for countries in transition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Four candidate countries in 2010: Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, and Iceland.

  2. 2.

    However, other available sources of data indicated even lower level of trust in the police. Andreescu and Keeling (2012) reported on findings of a public opinion poll conducted in 2010 on a representative sample, which showed that 66 % of respondents did not trust the police. When compared to 2008, the latest findings seemed even more unexpected since Romania joined the EU in 2007 and was together with Bulgaria under constant pressure and surveillance in order to strengthen the fight against organized crime and corruption. In fulfilling this goal, the police were expected to be one of the most important bodies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Kotnikova 8, Ljubljana, 1000, Slovenia

    Branko Lobnikar, Andrej Sotlar & Maja Modic

Authors
  1. Branko Lobnikar
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  2. Andrej Sotlar
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  3. Maja Modic
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Correspondence to Branko Lobnikar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Maribor, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Gorazd Meško

  2. Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Justice Tankebe

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Lobnikar, B., Sotlar, A., Modic, M. (2015). Do We Trust Them? Public Opinion on Police Work in Plural Policing Environments in Central and Eastern Europe. In: Meško, G., Tankebe, J. (eds) Trust and Legitimacy in Criminal Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09813-5_9

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