Cross-National Comparison of Citizen Perceptions of the Police in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia

• NCJ Number: 205896
• Journal: Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management Volume: 27 Issue: 1 Dated: 2004 Pages: 22-36
• Author(s): Robert C. Davis; Christopher W. Ortiz; Yakov Gilinsky; Irina Ylesseva; Vladimir Briller
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 15 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Based on uniform citizen surveys of attitudes toward police in New York City and St. Petersburg, Russia, this paper reports on a cross-national analysis of data on citizen perceptions of police.

Abstract

The St. Petersburg survey was the first attempt to measure citizen perceptions of the police in Russia. It involved 2,000 respondents who were representative of the city's population. The survey borrowed questions about contacts with the police and scales of police effectiveness and misconduct from the Chicago survey. The survey was administered for the first time in March of 1999 and has been administered in the spring of subsequent years. Similar questions about contact with police and attitudes toward the police were included in a community survey conducted in Central Queens, a multi-ethnic area of New York City. The New York sample contained approximately 1,200 respondents and was conducted from June through October of 1997. Because the same core set of questions was used in both New York and St. Petersburg, it is possible to analyze how differences in policing styles may be reflected in police-citizen interactions. The analyses of the two surveys included comparisons of voluntary and involuntary contacts with the police, perceptions of police effectiveness, and perceptions of police misconduct. The findings indicate that residents of St. Petersburg were more likely to be stopped by the police, and residents of New York were more likely to contact the police for assistance with crime and other neighborhood problems. Also, New York respondents viewed police as more effective than their counterparts in St. Petersburg. In both cities, approximately half of the respondents believed that the police were involved in misconduct. Study limitations and projections about the future of such cross-national surveys are discussed. 3 tables, 1 figure, and 42 references