CEORG June 2002 Omnibus Survey on Perceptions on Personal Safety, Quality of Police Protection and Attitude towards Death Penalty in Central and Eastern Europe
The latest CEORG opinion research, conducted in June 2002 on representative samples of respondents in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and the Russian Federation, looked into the perceptions of the work of the police both on local and country level, the feelings about respondents’ personal safety, and the attitude towards the death penalty.
Absolute majorities of Czechs (65,1%), Hungarians (57%) and Poles (63,3%), and relative majority of Lithuanians (48,4%) are satisfied with the work of police locally, while Bulgarians have equal groups of those satisfied (41,8%) and dissatisfied (42,4%) with police work, and in Russia, 66% of respondents is rather or very dissatisfied with police work on local level.
As for the police work on the country level, only in Poland an absolute majority of respondents is satisfied (59,4%), and in Bulgaria the group of those who are satisfied (46,8%) is bigger than the group of not satisfied (41,5%). In all other countries, the group of dissatisfied is bigger, reaching from 48,3% in the Czech Republic, through 49,4% in Lithuania, and 61,8% in Hungary, to 66,9% in Russia.
When comparing the evaluation of the police work on local and country level (see chart 3), in all countries except for Bulgaria, a higher satisfaction with police work on local level rather than on the country level can be observed. Interesting is the relationship between the highly positive evaluation of police work on local level and a rather negative evaluation on country level in the Czech Republic and in Hungary.
In all the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, a large majority of respondents (over 72%) feels safe in the locality of respondent’s residence. In Lithuania and in Bulgaria the groups of those that do and do not feel safe are relatively equally big. Only in Russia, an absolute majority of respondents (62,3%) does not feel safe in their place of residence.
Similarly to the evaluation of police work, respondents in all countries feel less safe on the country level than in place of their residence. Only in Hungary, there are more of those who feel safe in their country than of those who do not feel safe, in other countries those feeling unsafe prevail.
Related to the unsafe feelings can be the attitude towards death penalty. In all researched countries, an absolute majority of respondents do think that death penalty should exists in their country. This group is biggest in Russia (78,7%) and smallest in the Czech Republic (56,1%). On the other side, Hungary has the biggest group of death penalty opponents (31,5%), while this group is the smallest in Lithuania (15%). Worthwhile to note is the high percentage of Czech respondents (over 20%) with no opinion on the death penalty.
» CEORG June 2002 Omnibus Survey (pdf-file)
