Abstract

RUIZ-PEREZ, José Ignacio. Perceptions of the Police in a group of Latin American countries: direct and mediating relations with the fear of crime, victimization and collective efficacy. LogosCyT [online]. 2019, vol.11, n.3, pp.195-205.  Epub Dec 28, 2019. ISSN 2145-594X.  https://doi.org/10.22335/rlct.v11i3.968.

The objective of this paper is to understand the relationship between perceptions of the Police and the fear of crime, including their mediating role in the relationship between criminal victimization and collective efficacy related to the fear of crime. Non-random samples of university students and professionals from twelve Latin American countries participated. The results showed high reliability of the measures of perceptions regarding the Police (α of Cronbach between 0.84 and 0.91), fear of crime (0.71-0.91) and collective efficacy (0.64-0.91). The results were: a) direct and significant correlations between the perceptions of the Police and the fear of crime in six national samples, b) direct correlations between victimization and fear in four countries, c) two direct and two inverse correlations between perceptions of the Police and victimization, e) a significant mediating effect of victimization between fear of crime and satisfaction with the Police, f) collective efficacy showed direct correlations with perceptions of the Police in three out of five samples, and g) by countries, samples from Guatemala, Bolivia and Venezuela showed the highest levels of fear of crime and a worse perception of the Police.

Keywords : police; crime; security; perception; criminality.

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