ABSTRACT
Prior to 1989, public views on the Russian police were considered a state secret and were not openly available (Inkeles, 1950). Without releasing specic data, the Soviet literature traditionally insisted that the public prestige of police ocers was high and an absolute majority of Soviet citizens were satised with the work of police (Efremova et al., 1984). However, the studies published aer perestroika suggested otherwise (Krivel’skaya, 1990). e summary of major studies on public police satisfaction conducted between 1990 and 2011 is presented in Table 6.1. Whereas the studies dier in methodology and sampling, the ndings clearly indicate that, in the past 20 years, Russian society was predominately dissatised with police work (Shepeleva, 2005b). At any given time during the past 20 years, less than 50% of respondents were satised with the police, and public dissatisfaction ranged anywhere between 27% and 86.7%. A similar situation can be found when looking at the public trust of the Russian police. Table 6.2 presents a summary of major Russian studies on police trust published between 1989 and 2010. According to this research, public trust of the police ranges between 11% and 45% and public distrust in some years was as high as 75%.
