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45 J. Crime & Just. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/jlcmadjc45 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE Routledae 2022, VOL. 45, NO. 1, 1-20 https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2020.1852950 Taylor&Francis Group Police legitimacy or risk-avoidance: what makes people feel safe? Mahesh K. Nallaa and Anna Gurinskayabc aSchool of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA; 'Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, Russian Federation; Department of Criminal Law, Faculty of Law, Russian State Pedagogical University of Herzen, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This paper's focus is Russia, a country where trust in police has been low for Received 10 August 2019 decades. We examine key factors that explain citizens' assessments of risk and Accepted 12 November 2020 safety, perceptions of police legitimacy and engagement in precautionary KEYWORDS behaviors. We further explore the relationship between gender, prior victimi- Safety; risk; police legitimacy; zation, and neighborhood incivilities to explain citizens' safety perceptions. risk aversive behavior; trust Two key findings emerge from a survey of millennials from St. Petersburg, in police; police Russia. Police legitimacy is a strong predictor that is positively related to effectiveness; crime in citizens' safety perceptions. However, engagement in precautionary beha- Russia; fear of crime; viors is inversely related to respondents' safety and risk perceptions. In perceptions of safety addition, we have found that being a female is a strong predictor of feeling unsafe, a finding consistent with studies from other parts of the world. Neighborhood incivilities are negatively associated with safety perceptions, but its effect was only marginal for men in the subgroup analysis. Implications for the citizens' practices of engagement in co-producing safety versus enhancing police legitimacy and the police role in enhancing risk and safety perceptions are discussed. Introduction Can citizens feel safe if they do not see police as capable of protecting them? Do they feel safer after taking precautionary measures to protect themselves from crime? Citizens' fear of crime (FOC) and perceptions of safety (POS), as a research topic has been a staple for the past several decades for criminologists and public policy analysts alike. Citizens' perceptions of risk, fear, and safety directly affect individuals' quality of life, both physically and emotionally (Jackson and Stafford 2009). Most prior research has centered on gender, neighborhood crime rates, and prior victimization as pre-cursors to risk and safety perceptions. However, two areas have not received much attention related to citizens' perceptions of risk and safety. The first relates to trust in state apparatus designed for social regulation: Police presence, police legitimacy, and safety perceptions in promoting community residents' quality of life are intricately linked. The second area relates to citizens' engagement in self-help strategies and risk- avoiding precautionary behaviors related to risk avoidance and management strategies. The focus of this paper is the citizen's POS in Russia. Like many other countries globally, Russia has experienced a gradual decrease in violent crime in general and homicide rates, in particular, over the past several decades (Chalfin and McCrary 2018; Lysova and Shchitov 2015). In the 1990s, Russia has also weathered budgetary constraints for police departments, followed by the police reform in the second half of the 2000s. These developments reflect a neo-liberal thrive for decreasing the government spending and restructuring of Russian police in the wake of the Post-Soviet transition CONTACT Mahesh K. Nalla ® nalla@msu.edu O School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824- 1118, USA © 2020 Midwestern Criminal Justice Association