Latency, Police Statistics — Objective and Subjective Safety

Abstract

The relationship between latency and the quality of law enforcement is obvious. Police work affects public trust, whereas trust positively influences crime solving statistics; as a consequence the risk of getting caught determines crime rate. The subjective sense of safety and the objective security situation are strangely related in our modern society. The question arises what the police may do against the decreasing sense of public safety and what other social processes play a role in the sense of public safety that lie beyond the police’s scope of action.