It’s necessary to improve police communication with the younger and well-educated population in Serbia in order to increase trust in the Police.

By Miloš Popović (BCSP) / Photo: Srbija Danas, Saša Džambić

Public trust in the police is the cornerstone of successful policing. Previous reports on trust in the Serbian police, namely the 2014 TNS Medium Gallup and the 2015 CESID-OSCE surveys, show that despite an overall increase, less than 50% of the Serbian citizens have trust in the police. These reports indicate that women, urban population, and senior citizens have the most trust in the police.

In 2015 and 2016, respectively, CESID carried out two public opinion surveys for the BCSP. This brief summarizes the key components of the surveys and provides an in-depth analysis of each of the categories included in the analysis (i.e. gender, urban population, age, education, minority, and income).

The report finds that:

• There has been an upward trend in the overall public trust in the police since 2013;
• The overall public trust in the police has increased from 42% in 2015 to 49% in 2016;
• Women, senior citizens, and less educated individuals have a higher trust in the police than any other category in the data;
• Men, youth, and more educated citizens have a lower trust in the police than any other category in the data;
• All else being equal, trust in the police is 20% more likely in women than men;
• All else being equal, distrust increases as age and education increase by 22% and 23%, respectively.

Introduction

Public trust encourages better accountability and responsiveness of the police, facilitates cooperation with the police forces and compliance with the law, and encourages citizen participation in the local community.

In the case of Serbia, building and maintaining public trust is also one of the key conditions for closing Chapter 24 (Justice, Freedom and Security) in Belgrade’s accession talks with the EU. Consequently, this topic is of outmost importance for the Serbian policymakers and requires their immediate attention. Public trust in the Serbian police has not yet surpassed 50% even though there is an upward trend since the dismal levels of 2013.

This trend shows that the police have much to do to garner more solid public support. In particular, this report finds that the police enjoy the least trust among men, younger and more educated population. Especially is wide the gap between the young and highly educated population and older and less educated. These findings require a better response from the Ministry of Interior and the police related to communication strategies as well as transparency of information and accountability.

Figure 1: Public Trust in the Serbian Police 2011-2016

Analysis

Men are more distrustful of the police than women (28% versus 24%). There is a gap in the level of trust in the police between the younger and older individuals.

Figure 2: Gender

Only 38% of the respondents aged 18-29 have trust in the police compared to 57% of the respondents above 60.

Figure 3: Age

A similar pattern is evident in the level of education and income were the better degree and higher salaries are associated with more distrust.

Figure 4: Education

Figure 5: Income

Minorities and urban population have a slightly lower trust in the police than their comparable categories.

Figure 6: Nationality

Figure 6: Settlement

Neither the urban/rural nor minority/majority distinction have any practically significant effect on the level of trust. The same goes for income.

In contrast, the findings demonstrate that women and higher age are associated with trust, while more education is associated with distrust.

More substantially, the odds of higher trust in the police are 20% higher for women than for men if all other variables are held constant.

Similarly, there is 22% increase in the odds of higher distrust with each level of education. Finally, for each increase in the age category the odds of higher trust increase by 23%.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This report shows that while public trust in the Serbian police has been on the rise since 2013, figures considerably vary regarding specific demographic categories.

One of the main findings is that women, less educated and senior citizens have more trust in the police than men, highly educated and younger people. Given that building and maintaining public trust is essential for better accountability of the police and citizens’ compliance with the law, there is a plenty of room for improvement.

Key recommendations for the Ministry of Interior and the Police are:

• Improve communication with the younger and well-educated population (e.g. hire a spokesperson that would appeal to this population);
• Better inform the community about the activities of the police through annual or biannual reports;
• Provide timely and transparent information about the work of the police in fighting crime and corruption;
• Resolve key criminal cases that undermine police integrity in the eyes of the population;
• Respond to citizen’ complaints about misconduct of the officers in a timely, constructive and meticulous fashion.

Methodology

The data were produced as a part of CESID’s fieldwork carried out during the winter 2015 and spring 2016, and include a random sample of adult respondents from Belgrade, Vojvodina, and Central Serbia.

In total, the data consist of 2468 respondents (1468 from the 2015 winter, and 1000 from the 2016 spring survey). The CESID provided calculations for each of the figures given that the data are not publicly available.

Public trust is measured on a 5-point Likert scale with 1 denoting complete distrust and 5—complete trust in the police. The undecided or blank answers were coded as missing values.

To determine the size of the effect of each of these variables, this report runs a regression model with public trust as the outcome. The regression analysis is performed in “R” Programming Language v. 3.3.0. using package “ordinal”.