NCJ Number
162386
Date Published
1995
Length
4 pages
Annotation
The 1994 British Crime Survey revealed that the decline in public confidence in the police indicated during the 1980's and 1990's appears to have stabilized; in both 1992 and 1994, 82 percent of those surveyed believed that their local police did a good job.
Abstract
The survey gathered information from 7,299 members of the national core sample of 14,500 people aged 16 or over and from a booster sample made up of 2,030 members of minority groups. Fifty-five percent of the adults interviewed had at least one contact with the police during the year. Forty-three percent contacted the police themselves, 30 percent were approached by the police, and 18 percent experienced both types of contact. Those stopped as pedestrians were most likely to feel dissatisfied; 3 of 10 felt some discontent, primarily with the manner in which police officers were perceived to behave. Satisfaction increased among those reporting a crime from 66 percent in the 1992 survey to 72 percent in the 1994 survey. Twenty percent of participants remembered being annoyed by a police officer's behavior during the previous 5 years, and 2 percent of the participants had made a formal complaint during that time. Sixty-three percent of these complainants felt dissatisfied with the way their grievances were handled. Figures