| dc.description.abstract | Trust in the police is important to ensure police assignments, the safety of the population, and for the protection of rule and law and democracy. There are significant differences in trust in the police in European countries, and this study seeks to find out what lies behind these variations. Through multilevel analysis, the relationship between the quality of public institutions, measured by corruption level, and degree of confidence in the police in 34 European countries are investigated. It is assumed that the corruption level and trust in the police will have a negative relationship; corruption among public officials will reduce public confidence in the police. Despite the fact that European countries have a higher degree of confidence in the police than other parts of the world, the vast majority of countries in Europe have experience a decline in trust over the last decades. We will also investigate whether this decline is real or not. Murder rate and Nordic countries are included as macro-level control variables, as well as a number of micro-level variables, which have been shown to influence public confidence in the police in previous research. Results from the analysis shows that corruption in the public sector explains much of the variation in confidence in the police between the different European countries, and therefore confirm our assumption. | nb_NO |
