Slightly more than a third of Chernihiv residents trust the police

Only every third surveyed resident of Chernihiv region (37.4%) said that they trust the police. The results of the study show that the level of citizens’ trust in state institutions is generally low. However, despite the rather low trust indicators, the police are among the three most trusted public institutions (after the Church and the Armed Forces).

These are the conclusions for the Chernihiv region contained in the recently presented first large-scale sociological survey in Ukraine “Evaluation of the Police through Public Opinion”, which was conducted by the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research (KISD) in partnership with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

The above figures from the study indicate that half of Chernihiv residents consider the work of the local police to be effective (49.9%), and only 35.6% consider it ineffective (43.5% of Chernihiv residents consider the work of the police in Ukraine as effective). This is, by the way, the highest level of assessment of the effectiveness of the work of the local police from all regions of Ukraine. For example, only 15.3% of residents of the Kirovohrad region assess the work of the local police as effective.

At the same time, the study showed a significant degree of secrecy and “invisibility” of the activities of the Chernihiv police for the local community. Thus, more than half of the respondents (58.4%) do not know anything about their precinct police officer, and more than three quarters (78.6%) – about the head of the district police department in their district. This indicator is highest among young people (16-19 years old) and people over 60 years old. This indicates weak preventive work with the population, which, of course, should come into contact with the police more often.

Assessing how police officers behave when communicating with citizens, the majority of respondents note that they are polite (64.5%). At the same time, a fifth of those surveyed were faced with an indifferent attitude (24.9%), and almost every tenth (9.3%) was rude.

The survey revealed a fairly significant group of respondents in the Chernihiv region who are ready to help the police in any situation (34.3%).

Less than two-thirds of crime victims contact the police (60%). Accordingly, victims did not report a significant part of crimes to the police (40%).

Regarding the victims of crimes themselves, the survey shows that respondents most often became victims of theft. Thus, in the total number of victims, the share of victims of various thefts is (38.8%). For example, the number of victims of pickpocketing is 60 per 10 thousand population.

According to the authors of the study, in order to carry out an effective reform of the internal affairs bodies, it is necessary to change the methodology for assessing the work of the police: abandon the existing system of quantitative indicators, introducing instead a population survey – how much Ukrainian residents trust the police and how safe they feel in their own country.