Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

The concept of safety is closely related to the activities of law enforcement agencies and, above all, the police. In this regard, the individual qualities of police officers and their influence on the effectiveness of the State Police in ensuring individual safety of citizens are of great importance. One of the most pressing problems in modern society is to protect women from sexual and physical violence, which is required by the main provisions of the Istanbul Convention. The article presents the results of the research on the representations of Latvian police officers about victims of sexual violence in connection with individual representations of justice through a study of belief in a just world. The topicality of this topic is based on numerous researches of the stereotypical view on victims of sexual violence and the negative impact of these stereotypes on the further investigation of crimes and provision of assistance to victims, which leads to frequent concealment of rape cases and distrust to law enforcement agencies in the professional context of making a fair decision. The aim of this research was to determine how the belief in a just world among police officers (N = 170) affects their attitude towards women who have been sexually abused and their ability to objectively assess the situation. The research was conducted based on the results of 4 used methods: “Personal belief in a just world”; “General belief in a just world”; Attitudes toward Rape Victims Scale; Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale followed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the LSD Post Hoc test method to identify statistically significant differences between groups.