The Measurement of People’s Satisfaction on Public Safety and Police Service

The Measurement of People’s Satisfaction on Public Safety and Police Service

&nbsp;&nbsp;In American police history, supervisor’s judgment, crime reports and public opinion investigation have been used as indicators to measure police performance. Contemporarily, public opinion investigation is the most important indicator because it is the instrument to measure citizen satisfaction, a major dimension of police performance in community problem-solving era.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Page and Shapiro (1992) noted that public opinion is rational and stable; public opinion does change, but the change is incremental and predictable; a sudden change of public opinion can be traced to a certain events. Longitudinal data of polls conducted by independent institutions demonstrated that Taiwanese attitude and perception toward public safety is stable, incremental and predictable too. This paper shows the national trend of polls on Taiwanese sense of public safety. In addition, differences among counties and cities will be compared.