Abstract
The paper deals with the relationship of trust in the criminal justice system and the fear of crime in the Czech environment. It focuses on the empirical verification of the so-called assurance hypothesis on the influence of trust in the criminal justice system on the fear of crime.
We assume that people perceiving the criminal justice system as effective, fair and trustworthy, judge the likelihood of victimization as lower and, consequently, fear crime less. The assumptions are verified by structural modeling on data from Czech survey Aktér 2015 (quota sample, N = 926) made by Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University.
The findings suggest that the impact of trust in the criminal justice system on the feeling of security and fear of crime is evident in the Czech context, taking into account the direct experience of respondents with police officers as representatives of the criminal justice system. The effect remains significant even when taking into account the impact of perceived social disorganization around the place of residence and controlling for gender, age, education, size of the place of residence and victimization of the respondent.
The findings can be interpreted as evidence of the effectiveness of criminal policy based on the quality of interaction and a procedurally fair approach in reducing fear of crime.