Russians skeptical on police reform - poll
Moscow, 13 September: The law-enforcement reform launched by the bill on police may boil down to decorative name changes and reshuffles, most Russians (52 per cent) believe. According to the results of a nationwide survey conducted by Levada Centre on 20-23 August, 19 per cent of respondents believe that police will undergo true regeneration, and that there will be a radical reform of the Interior Ministry, while another 29 per cent do not know.
Of those who do not believe that the reform will succeed, 53 per cent said that "it is just measures to let off steam, to reduce public disaffection with today's police," the survey showed. Twenty-nine per cent of those polled believe that "an institution over which there is no public control cannot be trusted to reform itself". Another 11 per cent believe that the authorities "are keen to have the kind of police that exists at present".
According to the pollsters, 78 per cent of Russian people are to some extent familiar with the bill and have a view about it: 55 per cent learnt about it from TV and radio programmes, 13 per cent read it in the papers or on the internet, 7 per cent read experts' comments on the subject, and 3 per cent are familiar with alternative projects put forward by the opposition. However, practically a quarter of respondents (24 per cent) have not heard about the bill, the survey notes.
(Passage omitted) For the bill "On police" to become a focus of public discussion, which is to run until mid-September, the website zakonoproekt2010.ru was set up.
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