Survey of the Attitudes of Police Officers Toward Effectiveness of Police Crime Prevention

• In Event: Policing, social control and crime prevention

Abstract

The research aimed to examine the attitudes of police officers toward the effectiveness of police crime prevention. The research was conducted on 734 police officers.
A factor analysis was carried out using the principal component analysis. 5 components were singled out, which explained a total of 59% of the variance of the results. The conducted parallel analysis confirmed the retention of 5 factors. The first is called an assessment of the effectiveness of preventive techniques, the second is cooperation with preventive police officers, the third is an assessment of recognition of the importance of prevention, the fourth is knowledge of police prevention activities and the fifth is an assessment of the social impact on police prevention activities. It was shown that out of the total of 49% of the variance explained by predictors the Knowledge of police prevention activities factor explains 4% of the variance of the criteria. By introducing the second subscale – Cooperation with preventive police officers, the percentage of explained variance of the criterion increases by 2%. With the control of the contribution of the previous subscales or predictors and the introduction of the predictor Assessment of the effectiveness of preventive techniques in the third step, the explained variance of the perception of the effectiveness of prevention increases by as much as 37%. With the introduction of the factor Assessment and the recognition of the importance of prevention, the percentage of criteria explained increased by 5%. Finally, the last factor obtained as a predictor in the fifth step – Assessment of the social influence on the activity of police prevention did not increase the explanatory power of the criterion variance. Considering the above explained, those police officers who see the meaning of the techniques and methods of police prevention evaluate the activity of police prevention as more effective.

Authors

• Ruza Karlovic, University of Applied Science of Criminal Investigation and Public Security

• Ivana Glavina Jelaš, University of Applied Science of Criminal Investigation and Public Security

• Kruno Mahnet, police officer

• Sandra Veber, police officer