Disorder and criminality are the flipside of the justice system. Past handling of this dichotomy has focused on tougher measures based on the punitive notion of deterrence – people will be put off breaking the law because they fear the penalty.

But while ‘tough on crime’ is a politically expedient election slogan, it ignores evidence that this branch of ‘law and order’ is overloading the criminal justice system, overcrowding prisons and in many parts of Europe failing to do what it should: deter crime.

The FIDUCIA project has turned the study of criminology on its head by asking why people obey the law rather than the traditional line of query which focuses on why they break it. The project is keen to offer workable, ‘softer’ forms of justice which employ persuasion, awareness and education in place of punishment, control and authority. Early results are proving to be … well, ‘persuasive’. 

Attitudes towards the police – respect for their authority – differ markedly depending on where in Europe you ask. The majority of Finns, Germans and Danes, for example, feel a duty to do as the police say. But less than half of Greeks, Czechs, Hungarians, Bulgarians and other EU countries feel similarly compelled, according to findings in the latest European Social Survey published on 15 September to mark the International Day of Democracy.

These results show how difficult it is to develop a justice system that meets everyone’s expectations, especially across borders, suggests FIDUCIA’s coordinator Stefano Maffei, a lecturer in criminal procedure and an expert in extradition rules at the University of Parma, Italy: “When there is a legitimacy problem like this, it shows that law enforcers need better training on how to behave in everyday encounters, to treat people with fairness and respect so citizens do not just obey the law but actually trust the system … even contribute to it by reporting crimes.”

Crime and punishment?

FIDUCIA is working towards finalising by early 2015 a set of novel trust-based policy recommendations for EU countries and institutions faced with new criminal behaviours. Such behaviours are emerging out of developments in technology and increased cross-border travel. People trafficking, goods smuggling, cybercrime and criminalisation of migration and ethnic minorities are the main focus.

Core to FIDUCIA’s philosophy is that public trust (fiducia in Latin) in justice is critically important for social regulation. And while highly relevant to “conventional” forms of criminality, trust and legitimacy are also proving to have special relevance to these new types of crime.

The team – a Europe-wide consortium of 13 universities and research organisations – has developed and finalised research on trends, policies and public perceptions of crime in seven countries. And they have discovered that comparing trends across Europe is difficult due to varying data-recording procedures and definitions of crimes in each country.

They also discovered that deterrence-based strategies only have a measurable impact on relatively minor forms of illegal behaviour, such as driving infringements or littering; their overall impact on crime-control is debatable.

New surveys, new indicators

FIDUCIA is analysing the data collected in Round 5 of the European Social Survey, which included a module on ‘Public trust in justice’ developed by fellow EU project EURO-JUSTIS. FIDUCIA is also launching a new survey on ‘Trust and attitudes to justice abroad’. In an era where new crimes are emerging across EU countries and where policy responses are increasingly transnational, the team also wants to explore the importance of public trust and institutional legitimacy in relation to ‘foreign’ and cross-border justice systems.

Take the example of human trafficking, where partners in FIDUCIA are seeking to shed more light on how Europe can tackle this growing problem and its close association with prostitution rings.

“This is rather controversial,” says project partner Paolo Campana of Oxford University in an interview on the FIDUCIA website. Deterrence backfires in this case because it criminalises clients, making them afraid to report signs of trafficking or mistreatment.

“Better regulations and trust-based policies may have a larger impact than commonly thought, and they may also prove to be cheaper than the tough criminal measures that politicians often support,” Campana concludes. 

Policymakers’ turn

Fair treatment by the authorities engenders trust and leads to better compliance with the law: “FIDUCIA’s results will open people’s eyes to law-enforcement alternatives and help policy-makers get behind more effective, ‘normative’ measures emphasising public trust in justice and commitment to the rule of law, rather than on coercive crime-controls,” notes Maffei.

The long-term goal of the researchers is to help shape the agenda, change attitudes towards crime and justice, and promote debate on how to increase respect for the law and its agents in Europe.

“Most people know today that if you drink and drive you are a criminal, not a rebel without a cause,” stresses Maffei. This gradual shift in social opinion has been thanks to clear-cut laws, policing and communication. “With a similar rebranding effort, we can ‘taint’ other supposedly ‘acceptable’ crimes like tax evasion,” he concludes, “but it will take time and a new mind-set.”