Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The concepts of security and weapons are closely related, which equally applies to both public security and national security. In order to ensure their national security, countries are trying to purchase the most effective weapons. In order to achieve the necessary level of public security, the country arms law enforcement personnel. Such armament is legitimate and contributes to the strengthening of general security. At the same time, the purchase of weapons by the population for individual security purposes is not so unambiguous. On the one hand, law-abiding citizens have the right to protect their lives and health from criminal threats. On the other hand, a free turnover of a large number of weapons increases their accessibility and the possibility of getting hold by individuals who are able to use them for criminal purposes. The question arises: which weapons can be available to the population and which not. After all, weapons can be different. A special position in the category of weapons is occupied by cold weapons, the criminal liability for the possession of which is provided for in some countries. Moreover, the question of what should be considered a cold weapon is sufficiently disputable. All these issues are to be studied in the framework of this article.

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.

Violent crimes by the degree of public danger and the severity of the caused damage far exceed other criminal manifestations. Rapers disseminate the stereotype of aggressively-violent behaviour in the domestic and leisure microenvironment. These criminal offences are mostly condemned from the point of view of the general human morality. The aim of the present article is to examine the impact of socio-economic development level of a country on the level of violent crimes which are committed in that country. Successful prevention of a violent crime, which infringes on such important values as a human’s life and health, demands scrutinizing of its causes. Any crime, the violent one in particular, is not as a rule the result of one cause but is a combination of external and internal factors. The qualitative analysis conducted within the research has proved the conclusion that there is a definite connection between the socioeconomic development level of a country and the trend of the proportion of particular crime types that dominate in it. In less developed countries the proportion of violent crimes is much higher than in the developed ones, where thefts and other crimes against property prevail.

Crime is an essential social problem that seriously influences the security of the society and every individual. Social security, in turn, rather closely correlates with state security. Recidivism takes an important place in the general structure of crime and is closely related with the organized crime and state security. Trying to solve the problems of crime by isolating the criminals, at the same time overlooking the gaps in legal and moral cognition, the consequences of crime are temporary prevented but the causes of this problem is often not unmade thus reinforcing the risk of recidivism. The increase of the crime rate among females becomes more topical that taking into account the role of women in the process of reproduction directly influences mental health and security of the society. That, in turn, strengthens the necessity to study the causes of female crime, as well as those determinants that deter the representatives of certain gender from the criminal action. In this regard the study of psychological preconditions in the context of gender differences can arouse interest, highlighting such component of moral and legal cognition as justice.