Attitudes toward Law Enforcement in Greece and the United States

Abstract

Attitudes toward law, legal institutions, and law enforcement authorities may indicate a level of criminality. Such attitudes are the internalized residues of critical experiences fed back into the arena of behavior. A pioneer study found that attitudes toward law varied in expected directions with criminal and noncriminal samples in the United States and that a very definite and discernible gradient existed when the attitude inventories of maximum-security prisoners, probationers, labor-union members, and Mormons were compared. Does a similar gradient exist among criterion groups in other countries, based on their as sessed attitudes toward law, law enforcement, and legal institu tions ? After the American research schedule was pretested in Greece, it was administered to a sample of two hundred prison ers, two hundred laborers, and two hundred police officers (known to be the most law-abiding of Greek groups). A gradient was also discernible among the three Greek samples in the expected direction: the prisoners were the most unfavorable in attitude, the laborers favorable, and the police most favorable. The Greek police sample had scores similar to those of the Mormons in the United States. A criminality level index or measure, if it can be refined, would make a very important diagnostic and predictive tool in the field of crime control.