LATENT CRIME AND POLICE STATISTICS – THE ROLE OF SENSE OF SECURITY IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT WORK

: The social response to crime is implemented through crime control, that is, through the criminal justice system, crime prevention, law enforcement, and community and social programs and intervention methods outside the justice system. Examining the impact of the crime control system and institutions on crime is a relatively new trend in criminology, which is shown in the research presented in the paper. When researching the causality that causes crime, the attention of science is inevitably directed to the criminal justice system, primarily due to social phenomena such as the phenomenon of latent crime, and the conceptual paradox of subjective and objective security. In addition to examining the creation process of criminal statistics, the paper focuses on exploring the nature of latent crime and objective and subjective security. The relationship between subjective perceptions of security and the objective security situation in today’s modern risk society is given a detailed evaluation. The question rightly arises as to what the police alone can do to counteract the deterioration in the sense of security and what other social processes are involved that go beyond their scope and objec-tive scope of action. The subjective sense of security is difficult or impossible to separate from the latent crime in the given social environment or how law enforcement agencies respond to crime. If the quality of law enforcement is primarily determined by the effort to improve criminal statistics, the gap between objective and subjective security will naturally increase.


INTRODUCTION
The leading indicators of the effectiveness of law enforcement, including investigative authorities, are the crimes detected. 1 The absolute measure of significance is the best possible performance of these 'simplified' statistical indicators. However, even if cost considerations are taken into account, expenditure could be included in the overall assessment of the effectiveness of law enforcement. 2 All of this should be seen in the context of the material and technical conditions of the police service, distinguishing between successful and unsuccessful investigations. 3 In the police forces of some European countries, 4 a purely quantitative approach to statistics has been a chronic and stagnant problem for decades. 5 Because it prevents the actual workload of individual criminal investigation services from being measured. Competing political forces use statistics as a communication weapon, 6 while the public's sense of security is a much more meaningful measure of the effectiveness of law enforcement. 7 Latency 8 and the quality of crime control are also related concepts. "High crime latency indicates that people lack confidence in the police, which is why they do not report a crime. " 9 The social acceptability of crime control institutions and their functioning in this perspective can be easily inferred from the low number of crimes that remain in latency. 10 The latency studies have not only produced scientific findings, but have also provided valuable information for the police profession, law enforcement authorities, and, not least, crime policy. 11 But their main merit is that they have shed light on the characteristics and interpretation of police statistics. The dilemma about the credibility and impact of law enforcement statistics becomes apparent when the mechanism is considered in its complex scheme. 12 The propensity to report affects the rate of latent crime: if it is low, it increases it, and the risk of being caught is downward. It also increases the likelihood of avoid-2 V. Vári /2014/: Hatékony vagy eredményes a bűnüldözés, Magyar Rendészet, vol. 13, n° 1, pp. 87-97. 3 Zs. Németh /2013/: A számháború vége? Statisztika, a valóság és a rendőrség, Belügyi Szemle, vol. 61, n° 4, pp. 5-11. 4 Z. Vukašinović-Radojičić., D. Čvorović /2021/: The Police education and professional development systems in European countries in the context of police professionalization, Anali Pravnog fakulteta Univerziteta u Zenici, n° 26, pp. 117-129. 5 About the statistics of reported criminal offences in Serbia and other European countries, see: Đ. Ignjatović /2012/: Poređenje stopa prijavljenih učinilaca krivičnih dela: Srbija-ostale evropske zemlje -in: Kaznena reakcija u Srbiji (Ignjatović Đ., ed.), Pravni fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, Beograd, pp. 18-50. 6 See the experiences of Serbia: V. Nikolić-Ristanović /2012/: Evidentiranje kriminaliteta: iskustva iz sveta i Srbije, Prometej, Beograd. 7 L. Christián /2010/: Mai magyar rendészet, Rendészeti Szemle, n° 5, pp. 6-21. 8 "Latent crime" is used in the paper in the sense of crime which was commited and not registered, which is a common expression in literature (with the exception of the former Soviet and its derivatives) e. dark number, hidden crime, f. chiffre noire, š. número oscuro, n. dunkenfeld 9 Zs. Németh /1999/: Bűnüldözés -Bűnmegelőzés válsághelyzetben, Főiskolai Figyelő, n° 3, p. 108. ing consequences if the law enforcement authority has a low detection efficiency. Detection rates improve when citizens have confidence in law enforcement authorities and are willing to testify and cooperate. This, in turn, requires a generally reassuringly positive outcome from the authority in their cases. This also shows that the crime rate decreases as the risk of detection increases. 13

THE PROCESS OF GENERATING STATISTICS
The Austrian criminologist Arno Pilgram considers the study of the process of generating statistics to be an integral part of statistical analysis. 14 The production of statistics is a complex social action involving the investigator, the prosecutor, the judge, the victim, 15 and the offender. A case passes through three filters until it becomes a statistic at several points. The first significant filter -essentially the input to the funnel -is the persons involved in the case who actively bring the action to the attention of the authorities. Of course, they cannot know whether it is of criminal relevance at this stage. This is where factors such as the relationship between the citizen and the authorities, the willingness to report, or even the question of trust come into play. "The evolution of the detection rate plays a significant role in the development of this trust, and some views suggest that this is reflected in changes in the willingness to report. " 16 The offense at stake here remains in latency, does not become a crime, and thus does not become a statistic. This is why the first filter is crucial, as there are only guesses and estimates, depending on the latency studies.
The following filter is the police. In this activity, the police are both passive and active in that they are results-oriented and statistics-driven, and determine their willingness to start an investigation, i.e., to be involved, depending on the expected outcome at the time of input, and they do so in the absence of any civil control. 17 The activity and readiness to act of the second filter are highly reactive to the first filter, i.e., the willingness to report. 18 If the effectiveness of law enforcement is di-13 H. D. Schwind /2011/: Kriminologie. Eine praxisorientierte Einführung mit Beispilen, Kriminalistik Verlag, Heidelberg, p. 61 14 A. Pilgram /1980/: Kriminalität in Österreich, Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, Wien, pp. 2-50. 15 About the importance of reporting criminal offences and the position of the victim, see: B.
Simeunović- Patić /2002/: Experiences of the International Crime Victim Surveys in Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Yugoslavia, European Journal of Crime, Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, Vol. 10, n° 2-3, pp. 117-137. 16 I. Vavró /1993/: A társadalmi változások és a bűnözés-In: Társadalmi változások, bűnözés és rendőrség című nemzetközi konferencia (J. Vigh., K. Kerezsi., eds.), Budapest, ELTE, pp. 73-78 17 Jenő Kaltenbach draws attention to the importance of the role of civil control: any act of public administration its legality must be subject to independent authority from the legal entities concerned. This process also refers to the essential condition for the functioning of every democratic community, the indispensability of public trust, which is the basis of every act of power and its sole source of legitimacy. Suppose any organ of the rule of law loses public trust. In that case, its dysfunctional operation (for example, if the classification of his actions is done exclusively by himself) confuses the rule of law in its process, ultimately leading to its inability. See in more detail J. Kaltenbach /2009/: A rendőrség civil kontrollja Magyarországon, Rendészeti Szemle, vol. 57, n° 4, pp. 3-18. 18 According to Pál Déri, several factors also influence the filing of a report, such as individual interest and the seriousness of the act. See in more detail Déri /2005/: Az összbűnözési statisztika nem a valóságot mutatja, Belügyi Szemle, vol. 53, n° 2, pp. 57-66. rectly related to performance evaluation, and if work tasks that are performed effectively are not adequately evaluated and recognized by the police, this impacts motivation and attitudes towards reporting. However, if the case becomes a crime, a successful investigation will lead to the accused being brought before the third filter of the process, the court. At the second point in the chain of actions, the first statistic, the policing statistic, is produced, complemented at the end of the process by the court statistic and then the prison statistic. The various crime statistics are thus the result of a lengthy process in which, in addition to the participants and witnesses of the crime, one of the leading players in the state, or more precisely its various institutions, often shape the resulting data in their image. The data are thus generated through a selection process in which the interests, goals, and motivations of the individuals and institutions involved have a decisive influence on the final result, the crime statistics. 19 2. LATENT CRIME Latent crime -or, as the German criminological literature calls it, the 'Dunkelfeld' 20 -accounts for a more significant proportion of all crime at any given time. A series of empirical criminological studies have confirmed the thesis that police statistics show far fewer crimes than actual crimes. Studies of victimization have shown that latent crime is higher than initially expected: for example, a study in Washington, DC, showed that the actual number of victims is 20 percent higher than police statistics. 21 The proportion of crime that remains latent compared to the balance of recorded corruption, i.e., known, tells us much about the social context of crime and even more about the relationship between law enforcement and crime. 22 In this approach, the relationship between law enforcement and citizens is the "Achilles' heel" of the issue since the level of trust in the authority is a fundamental determinant of the quality of law enforcement. 23 This, in turn, requires an undistorted reporting of official police statistics and an ongoing probe of latent crime, 24 19 R. Perényi /2006 as there is no consistent relationship between the two. 25 Statistical discrepancies are often because the police do not prosecute low-profile offenses ex officio, and therefore such violations are not reflected in the statistics. Research shows that these offenses can increase the official figures by around 50%. 26 In addition to official police statistics, it is equally important to have a credible picture of latent crime. Without it, we learn nothing about the relationship between law enforcement and citizens. "Official crime statistics are two-faced: on the one hand, they show the crime that has become known, and on the other, they can be used to infer the workload, efficiency, and permeability of the body that produces them, information that can be crucial for the external perception of the body. In the light of the above, it seems that the results of opinion poll-like surveys are a good complement to official crime statistics. " Suppose we want to judge crime predominantly based on the detection rates of police statistics. In that case, we can quickly be confronted with the paradox that Kreuzer has identified: the better the detection rate, the higher the latency, for the simple reason that the police are oriented towards 'easy cases' and have a high detection rate in these, while the number of mass cases, such as theft, is meager. 27 As Korinek states, "In the formation of the image of crime at the individual and societal level, myriad objective and subjective factors combine to have an impact. One of the sources of the social image of crime is crime statistics, which provide information on known crimes. The crime itself is a very complex phenomenon and difficult to measure, so a distinction is made between measuring known crime and estimating total crime. " 28 Various calculated values are added to the crime statistics to compare crime by area and internationally. This is usually done by multiplying the number of known public offences by the population, possibly the number of people with a criminal record, per 100,000 or 10,000, which is described as the 'crime rate' . This data can be broken down by age group and type of crime so that age-specific indicators illustrate the proportion of a particular age group or class of crime. In particular, the figures provide valuable information for crime control organisations to help them organise and act more effectively. A proper scientific interpretation of the figures is necessary to draw the correct conclusions from the statistics. The shortcomings of crime statistics were recognised early on by American criminologists, who began research to remedy them, establishing the National Crime Victimisation Survey (NCVS), which was used alongside the Uniform Crime Statistics (UCR), and in 1986 the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). 29 The latter was a significant attempt to improve the collection of data that come to the attention of the police but are not reflected in crime statistics.
Since a decrease in latency drives the increase in known crime, this does not necessarily mean a reduction in security but can be attributed to the cooperation of 25 H. D. Schwind /2011/. op. cit., p. 54. 26 W. G. Skogan /1977 Dimensions of the Dark Figure of Unreported Crime, Crime and Delinquency,vol. 23, A. Kreuzer /1994/: Kriminologische Dunkelfeldforschung, Neue Zeitschrift für Strafrecht (NStZ), vol. 10-16, p. 10. 28 L. Korinek  the population and an increase in law enforcement efficiency. It should be noted, however, that both crime statistics and the system of research findings are of limited effectiveness, but combining them can provide a much more nuanced picture. 30 There are several ways of understanding latent crime, including experiments, which researchers carry out by observation. Less well-known is participant observation. 31 The most common is interviewing, which asks whether the respondents have been victims or perpetrators of crime. Many factors make it difficult to detect latent crime, yet despite the limitations, the victim survey has become an entirely accepted technique.
Through questionnaire surveys, researchers aim to conclude on: -the estimated level, distribution, and evolution of overall crime; -victims, victimization, and risks of victimization; -perceptions of safety, the material, the moral and psychological damage caused by the offense; -effectiveness, acceptance of criminal justice, and willingness to report.
The general problem of questioning was the prevalence of crime. The interviewee may answer "often, " "sometimes, " "rarely, " or "never, " which significantly reduces the accuracy of the estimate of the perpetration or victimization. 32 Nevertheless, latent crime studies have revealed some shortcomings in official crime statistics, such as: -Most prosecutions start with a report from the public, i.e., what the people "do not release" to the level of official sanctioning becomes a significant mass of latent crime. -The law enforcement agencies will be selective in their report cases, and some may not even be investigated. This is so-called official selection, the essence of which is that the police, as a total, bureaucratic, and relatively closed organization, are results-oriented by social expectations. The justification for the organization's existence is not the improvement in public safety, which is difficult to measure, but the increase in the proportion of crimes detected. 33 This can easily lead to a situation where the police, 30 The German criminological literature distinguishes between absolute and relative "dark zones" or latency, which will be close depending on whether public opinion polls have been conducted to reveal it. He calls the explored part the relative dark zone, while the more significant, "unexplored" territory is the absolute dark zone.  Jürgen/1973/: Methoden empirischer Sozialforschung, Hamburg, p. 288. 32 It is crucial to explain the word prevalence, which means the proportion of individuals suffering from a specific disease (frequency of occurrence) in the entire population. Foreign Words Collection, http: //idegen-szavak.hu/prevalencia, 27. august 2022. 33 According to T. Király, the official selection ensures the selection against the caseload. He distinguishes three versions of this: one is the legislator's activity in criminal policy, the second is the interpretation of the legislation by the courts, and the third is the avoidance mechanisms of the law-enforcement bodies. See: T. Király /1986/: Legality in criminal proceedings, Magyar Jog, n° 5, p. 205. wishing to increase the detection rate, try to dissuade the complainant in minor cases that seem hopeless in the first place. 34 "Because of the unmanageable caseload, the investigating authorities select cases themselves at the outset of the investigation, taking into account when they can achieve results and which cases are followed by the media and the public. [...] In doing so, investigating authorities consider the principle of efficiency, carrying out cost analyses to see where maximum results can be achieved with minimum effort. This process naturally contradicts the principle of legality, but it does not contradict the requirements of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. " 35 -Attention has been drawn to law enforcement organizations' various organizational and operational characteristics: the selection method of working. As the research shows, minor cases tend not to be reported, but the reporting rate is very high when reporting is a precondition for an event to occur. Lack of confidence in the police or dissatisfaction with police performance was cited by 43% of respondents as a reason for not reporting, followed only by the citation of minor damage. 36

THE IMPACT OF EXPEDIENCY, LEGALITY AND LATENCY ON STATISTICAL EFFECTIVENESS
Official crime statistics are far from reality, yet many countries' police forces regard them as the most important source of information on crime. The biggest problem is that it is used as a guide to law enforcement resources and significantly influences current crime policy objectives. "Since the nineteenth century, it has been a problem that official crime statistics have not been able to show the total number of crimes committed. The latent crimes were not reported, and therefore these offenses were not brought to the attention of the authorities, and therefore the cases were not prosecuted. " 37 The uncertainty of detection also significantly impacts the quality and attitude of law enforcement, given that while higher latency crimes are more frequent, lower latency crimes are more serious. 38 However, if we reasonably judge and assess each type of crime in terms of the level of risk to our security. The correct response is to deploy and invest law enforcement capacity more effectively in higher risk crimes, i.e., those with a higher probability of occurrence but lower abstract social risk, rather than in lower chance but higher severity crimes. 39 In addition, the anomalies in efficiency and law enforcement caused by a statistical approach can equally be explained by the need to present the law enforcement authority's 'outward' exact statistical indicators. Thus, the 'internal' effectiveness is essentially overshadowed, but this gives the police a bureaucratic, recalcitrant operational character that citizens perceive as inefficient and self-serving. "The pursuit of efficiency, which overwhelms all other values, has made illegal means commonplace, with only managerial expectations reflected in statistical indicators. All this could be seen as wastefulness since it reduced the "public soldiers" of the police, deprived of their autonomy, to the servile executioners of mechanical orders and instructions, and consequently reduced the immense intellectual resources of the Hungarian police; to inaction. " 40 Policing based on the results of reported crime statistics sets in motion extremely destructive processes. This hurts the internal organisational culture of the police and how police officers treat citizens and victims. The organisation's constant drive to improve statistics completely distorts the direction of police work and, more importantly, reinforces tendencies that undermine lawful and fair operations.
The high degree of latency is also correlated with the above-mentioned inappropriate response and functioning of the law enforcement authority. It is specifically linked to the allocation of the criminal capacity of the police force. "There is an extremely high turnover of young and inexperienced police officers, and in rural areas, the state of the technical equipment makes the work of uniformed officers difficult, " complained rural police chiefs to local councils [...]. The reports highlight why last year's crime statistics were so alarming. The district police stations in the capital are in a better position, but there too, the findings of the commanders do not show any satisfaction. " 41 Which is precisely in crime categories where resources are lowly concentrated -e.g., petty crime: timber and crop theft -and shows low values -homicides, armed robberies -where capacity is high anyway. As one of the conclusions of the "dark field" research in which he participated, Paul Déri writes in his study that the lack of reporting activity, which causes high latency, is indicative of a lack of police receptiveness, and low detection efficiency, and time-wasting bureaucratic methods of prosecution. 42 "Crime statistics can best be compared to a grocery store, where there are hundreds of items, one per liter, one per meter, one per kilo, etc. However, they are similar but not identical to a grocery store because there is no latency. On the other hand, the different goods can be made homogeneous by expressing the value of each set of goods in money". 43 Police statistics could only be evaluated in conjunction with the results of latency research. To draw independent conclusions from them is folly. Latency studies 40 A. Berta /1998 are essential. Only by identifying the "dark spots" of crime can a realistic crime map be developed based on solid data and law enforcement resources adjusted accordingly, thus allowing for a more targeted and focused operational strategy. Hirschi, for example, has directly suggested that the results of latency studies should complement official crime statistics. In addition, latency data would reveal important information about the local relationship between the population and law enforcement. 44 Pál Déri also believes that it would be much more beneficial to assess the local crime situation: "The public is not interested in what the statistics show, but in whether or not they feel safe, both in their own lives and those of their relatives, in their physical safety and their property. " 45

ASPECTS DETERMINING THE PUBLIC'S PERCEPTION OF SECURITYTHE INTERPLAY BETWEEN OBJECTIVE SECURITY AND SUBJECTIVE SECURITY
Defining a sense of safety 46 and security are interdependent activities. First, security is understood as an essential elementary condition for the orderliness of social coexistence, which is approached semantically from a primarily negative perspective in terms of its absence. Security is a multi-factorial, complex concept that expresses the state and society's interests, values, the country's territory, and population free from external and internal dangers and threats. Closely related to the concept of security, with crime analysis concepts to be interpreted and handled together are the following: Threat is some kind of risk factor, an unwanted event that can occur with a given probability in the future, which can negatively influence the implementation of the activity or may pose a threat to the integrity of beings, things, and objects. Perceived risk is based on how an individual perceives the likelihood of becoming a victim of crime. The perceived risk of victimisation involves a cognitive judgement, while fear of crime is an emotional response. 47 Today, that perceived risk is most often discussed as a cognitive or rational component, which is a strong correlate of fear of crime. 48 Risk can also be assessed in terms of crime. Crime as a risk and danger to anyone, and can be viewed from the offender's point of view, with the risk of being caught as a factor influencing offending. Risk is an expression of uncertainty, an unfavorable event, or the combined measure of the likelihood and severity of its 44 T. Hirschi /1969/: Causes of Delinquency, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles, pp. 369-388. 45 P. Déri /2000/. op. cit., p. 31. 46 In 1994, the UN Development Program defined seven elements of human security, of which only one is personal security, which is threatened by crime. consequences. 49 The level of risk sources is therefore never based on static elements; their endless variation is a component of a set of multiplied variables. From the offender's point of view, the available benefits are more important as a motivation for committing the crime than the danger of failure. The perpetrator thus adjusts the risk to the quality of the benefits and not to the expected dangers as consequences. 50 The critical issue is to clarify what security means. In particular, the question of personal security is challenging for police science. Whether it can be measured, and if so, how and by what means. "Security is a feeling of satisfaction, dissatisfaction. It perceives and evaluates the State of being, which it defines as security or insecurity, according to its individual experience. The combined effect of many factors shapes and changes the sense of security of individuals and society as a whole through them. Subjective security as a state is much more difficult to measure, and there are no exact methods or conclusive data to measure it. " 51 As a former police chief put it: 'Taking European examples, it is clear that for an area to be safe, for the population to feel safe, a combination of factors is necessary. From clean public spaces to responsive and service-oriented policing, a combination of many tasks needs to be organized at a high level. " 52 The concept of security cannot, therefore, be reduced to public safety content alone. And certainly not to things like how many offenders were caught in the borough that year or how many fines were imposed on speeders.
As several authors approach the subjective side of security, the fear of crime can be examined from three angles: -cognitive: knowledge and inferences about the development of the security situation, estimates of crime; -affective: feelings, direct fear of crime; -conative: behavioral change, what precautions people take to avoid danger. 53 If people are afraid or perceive themselves at risk of becoming a victim of crime, this emotional fear and cognitive perception can have drastic consequences for their daily lives. In addition, those who have experienced being a victim of crime may perceive greater risk and feel greater fear than those who have no understanding of being a victim of crime. Incidents of crime, perceptions of risk and fear of crime can lead people to reduce or stop participating in social activities, depriving them of many social and personal rewards. 54 László Korinek also highlights attitudes towards crime, which are reflected in people's attitudes towards the authorities, including a decrease in the willingness to report the crime due to a decline in trust in the police. 55 The objectivity of security is fundamentally questionable because of its systemic nature. It is inseparable from the perception and action of the system, the perception, and the perception of the system by the individual, who is an intrinsic part of it, and who is active in the ever-changing space of the process, society, and the population. 56 However, security is also the same as the subject who cannot assess safety and risks, which wrongly or incorrectly predicts dangers, since it is they who form images and opinions. In them, the sense of security evokes an emotional charge, positive or negative. On the other hand, the representation of security as a value of society also shifts the responsibility to the individual, whereby the individual is also responsible for his own subjective beliefs and feelings of negative protection. 57 In this approach, we can move from community solidarity to an utterly vulnerable individual who is forced to face threats beyond his control. 58 The concept turns in on itself and acquires a paradoxical interpretation if we treat security as an immaterial entity or product. If we separate it from the individual who perceives security, we turn our backs on the systemic interpretation and render security conceptually contradictory. 59 "Subjective security emerged when the picture formed from objective data no longer matched the impressions and experiences of civilians, and these experiences were considered important by policymakers and thought that they could not be ignored in any way. " 60 It was precisely for this reason that public opinion polls began to be used to supplement the official crime statistics "produced" by the police. The only problem is when these surveys are commissioned by the police and carried out by less than independent organisations.
Even if subjective security cannot be measured, the level of its absence can, and its quality and quantity can become the probabilistic value of risk analyses. In essence, this is the way to make security tangible, the inverse of the objective element 54 N. E. Rader /2004/:  of safety. The domains of security and its negative side -risks and threats -interact with the structures and institutions of criminal policy and normative legislation. The degree of risk is related to the ratio of danger to vulnerability. 61 Guaranteeing security is not a state or public monopoly but is achieved through conscious cooperation. 62 But the public expects the State to ensure security, especially in paternalistic countries. The State's role is to create, maintain and constantly improve the framework conditions that enable citizens to enjoy physical, social, and economic security, maintain a decent quality of life, and plan their destiny with foresight. 63 However, there is no consensus on the threat posed by some of the changed and entirely new forms of crime and whether and to what extent they are changing the situation regarding public safety. The main reason for this lack of consensus is that an effective system for measuring objective security has not yet been developed, probably because the need for security is essentially unlimited and can never be fully satisfied 64 , as is also reflected in the paradox that, as security improves, the demand for security increases. 65 Research has shown that there is not only any correlation between the possibility of victimization -i.e., objective safety -and the subjective perception of safety but that the opposite is true, i.e., that the highest levels of victimization are found in the areas, regions or countries where the risk of victimization is lowest. This kind of research is confirmed by a 2005 survey of subjective perceptions of safety in 17 European countries. This survey may show a significant divergence from objective safety indicators, as the survey shows that "the strongest fear of crime is in the countries with the lowest victimization rates. " 66 The collective heightening of fears leads to mass, totally irrational, and unjustified consequences, which is why, after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, citizens switched from road to air transport in droves, which increased the number of road accident fatalities by almost 1,600. 67 The constant propaganda of the global threat of terrorism is a prime example of the perpetuation of a collective sense of fear. Politicians, in conjunction with the media, have managed to portray activities for which they are responsible as low risk. 68 In contrast, certain external factors for which they are not responsible are considered high risk. The perpetuation of a sense of fear is an important identity and community-building force, which can explicitly strengthen the advocacy capacity and rhetorical tools of the state police apparatus. Ultimately, it could be said that if a crime (or, more precisely, the fear of it exists primarily in our minds, in our feelings and anxieties, then the state is doing the right thing. If it is treating us with psychological placebos, it would not need to examine individual security measures' effectiveness. 69 Suppose we hold the community responsible for its safety. In that case, I think it is very disingenuous to gloss over the true nature of that responsibility or even to pass it on, as the tabloid media tend to do for ratings and profit.
Géza Finszter draws attention to the greater responsibility of the local community and the individual for public safety and the weakness of centralized law enforcement authority in a society where fear of crime is increasing while the effectiveness and administration of public action for public safety is declining."The weakening of individual and collective defenses also has a significant negative impact on the performance of law enforcement authorities, which take responsibility for the general state of public safety but can do almost nothing to ensure local public safety. And the more centralized their organization, the more powerless they are to deal with local problems. " 70 In such a system, the police can only think in monocausal theory and look for increasing numbers and presence solutions. 71 As Ákos Farkas puts it, "The relationship between the police and the community is characterized by much more rigid structures of authority dominance. Among these, the first and most typical solution is community policing, or as it is used in terminology: visible policing. Visible policing means that the police are in the field, on the streets, and in contact with schools. " 72 Increased police presence is not necessarily associated with an improved subjective sense of security. Community police officers who understand and address the problems of the local population, respond to concerns and seek solutions are needed. They constantly monitor issues closely linked to local public safety, such as cleanliness, calm and order.