Public satisfaction with social order drops: poll

Public satisfaction with social order drops: poll
By 中央社
編譯:廖文韻

2009-09-01 00:00:00    

Although the number of crime victims in Taiwan appears to be dropping, an increasing number of people are not satisfied with the government's performance in maintaining social order, according to the results of a survey released last Saturday.

The survey, conducted by the Crime Research Center of National Chung Cheng University in Chaiyi, found that 76 percent of the Taiwan public was dissatisfied with the government's efforts in the first half of the year to improve social order.

This was an increase of 5.3 percentage points compared with the results of a similar survey in 2008, said Yang Shi-lung, director of the center, at press conference Saturday.

In addition, public satisfaction with the police's ability to maintain social order also dropped in this year's poll to 39.5 percent compared with 47 percent last year, he said.

This suggests that the government is losing the people's trust, he added.

However, the survey also found that the percentage of fraud crime victims fell from 7.7 percent to 4.1 percent, theft crime victims from 16 percent to 11 percent, and violent crime victims from 5 percent to 3 percent.

On the question of public safety, 57.6 percent of the respondents said they were worried that they or their family members would become victims of crime, and nearly 40 percent said they did not feel safe going out at night.

These two figures were close to the results of the 2008 poll, Yang said.

When asked about the death penalty, 42.2 percent of the respondents said they were firmly opposed to the idea of its abolition, while 5.5 percent said it should be dropped from the law books. However, 50 percent said they would support the abolition of capital punishment if substitute measures are introduced.

Again, these results were close to those in the 2008 survey, Yang said.

The survey was conducted islandwide by telephone July 1-7 on residents age 20 or above. A total of 2004 valid samples were collected, and the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.19 percent.