Pasitikėjimas teisėsaugos institucijomis Lietuvoje
Trust in Criminal Justice Institutions in Lithuania

Summary/Abstract: Trust in Lithuanian police, courts and prosecutors office has reached the record values in 2015. Trust and confidence in these institutions is growing, though it is difficult to identify what exactly is stimulating that growth. Public relations or media influence, or good organization of the institutional work as well as other reason can be an explanation for the better public attitudes. Answers to the question “Do you trust the police, courts, prosecutors office?” do not explain what was done properly when trust values raise, and what problematic areas of institution work need attention when evaluations are getting worse. There is a significant doubt expressed in academic literature if this and only indicator, so often used for the evaluation of institution work, adequately describes how good or effectively prosecutors office works, police safeguards public security, and courts ensure protection of citizen rights, defence of interests and other demands of democratic society. The article analyses trust and confidence in institutions of criminal justice system in Lithuania. Analysis uses ideas and data of two international research projects - EURO-JUSTIS and FIDUCIA. We examine trust and confidence as complex phenomenon, which include several important aspects: 1) effectiveness of criminal justice institutions; 2) distributive justice; 3) procedural justice; 4) shared perceptions of right and wrong and shared moral values with institutions; 5) legitimacy of institutions; 6) co-operation between society and criminal justice institutions. Evaluation of the survey data shows that different elements of this phenomenon obtain different ratings, and differ from the evaluation of trust and confidence in the broad sense. Understanding of these differences gives us a possibility to assess and improve work of criminal justice institu¬tions more purposefully.

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