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The Community Policing Evaluation: The Pilot Study in the Slovenian and the Croatian Urban Community

The Community Policing Evaluation: the Pilot Study in the Slovenian and the Croatian Urban Communities Abstract Community policing is an accepted contemporary concept of police work in Slovenia and Croatia. It was introduced in both countries within the framework of reforms following the socio-political and economic changes in the 1990s. The aim was to bring the Slovenian and the Croatian police closer to the European standards of modern democratic policing. In all post-socialist central and south-eastern European countries, community policing is expected to rebuild police legitimacy and, through citizens trust to police, to promote collective efficacy. There are serious dilemmas whether this model achieves results because of typical problems with implementation of community policing in these countries. In the first place, the fact is that the community policing model is more or less adopted on a declarative level, due to substantial misunderstanding of its fundamental principles and lack of basic requirements. In such circumstances, some improvisations of community policing are likely to occur, which cannot contribute to the quality of interaction between police and community nor improve the citizens’ feeling of safety. On the other hand, one of the central premises of community policing is that not police alone, but the whole community is responsible for the community safety. If community cohesion is weak, the community cannot act as a control agent. Therefore, in this study we analyze the level of implementation of community policing in Slovenia and Croatia from the point of view of four sets: quality of police contact, perception level of crime and disorder, fear of victimization and level of community cohesion.

community policing; evaluation; urban community; Slovenia; Croatia

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