Police response to crime: The perceptions of victims from two polish cities

Abstract

While police structures and functions have changed dramatically in post‐communist societies, as yet little research has been carried out to either evaluate these changes or monitor victims’ perceptions of the ‘new’ police. Here we report on an exploratory study that monitors the experiences of 398 burglary victims in Poland, and compare the findings with those from England. While Polish victims perceived the police as having changed in a number of ways, and were especially positive about the improved ‘victim‐proneness’ of the police, they were generally far more critical of the police than were their English counterparts. This to some extent reflects differences in police procedures and to this extent is amienable to change, but our tentative conclusion is that criticism of the police is more a reflection of the rising crime rate and public feelings that if crime is out of control then the police are to blame. If our view is correct then it would appear that public evaluation of the police will be unlikely to improve until fear of crime is reduced, which raises further issues as far as operational policing is concerned.