Is Russia a police state?

The Ministry of Internal Affairs admits that the previous police reform has failed. The new reform, as evidenced by the "road map", which fell into the newspaper "RBC Daily", includes 5 steps:

Changing the system of registration of crimes; state optimization; cleaning the rows from bribe takers and drunkards; increased disclosure; The transformation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs into a more open department.

So still-a lot of or few police officers in Russia in comparison with other countries? How much money does it take and in which country they are more effective? The answers are on today's Slon maps.

* Do you feel safe, walking alone at night in the city or the area where you live? The percentage of those who answered "yes"

Our initial data with a list of sources can be downloaded here . Basically, we used the last affordable UN statistics, the IMF data and Gallup polls. The data is also contained in the table at the end of the article - they can be sorted by any parameter.

The number of police officers and murders for 100,000 people speak for themselves. Alas, we were not able to find a good array of data on police expenses by and large of the countries, so we took GDP (by purchasing power parity (PPS), that is, taking into account the cost of goods and services in different countries) and divided the volume of economies into the number of police officers in order to at least roughly assess in which country the police are the most “expensive”.

A sense of safety is measured by a Gallup poll . Someone can say that you can’t rely on the sensations of people, but after all, the state and the police exist, in the end, so that people are comfortable to live-including it, it’s nice and without worries to walk at night. Moreover, the OECR includes this indicator in its official statistics .

Based on the survey data, we calculated how many citizens a sense of security provides one policeman. This is a good measure of efficiency of “cops”. Another measure of efficiency is how many police officers per murder per year. It is necessary to be more careful with her, because such a comparison only works in countries with a similar frequency of crimes. For example, in Russia and Peru, almost the same number of murders per 100,000 people - about 10. But in Peru, this level of crime (not the highest) provides 31 policemen per 100,000 population, and in Russia exactly 2 times more - 62. The conclusion is 2 times more effective than in Russia.

Of course, our comparisons have many disadvantages. For example, it is clear that in many authoritarian or backward countries there are few and it gives a sense of safety to many people. But this is unlikely because the “cops” there are very effective. Rather, in backward states, people are accustomed to great danger on the streets and do not pay attention to it, and in authoritarian - the strict regime ensures safety. Nevertheless, even with all these discounts it is clear that the Russian police are far from the most effective even in the group of developing countries. For example, in neighboring Kazakhstan, a smaller level of murders can be kept by a smaller number of police officers.

Is Russia a police state?

Country / Territory the number of police officers per 100,000 population of GDP for 1 policeman
(according to PPS, in international. $ 2010) a sense of security* How many citizens gives
a sense of security one police murder for 100,000 police population for one murder

Austria	328	12138572	75	229	0.6	547
Azerbaijan	134	7782575	71	528	2.2	61
Argentina	196	8361573	39	199	3.4	58
Bangladesh	87	2114792	82	948	2.7	32
Bahrain	1978	2251863	79	40	0.6	3296
Belarus	325	4104798	48	148	1.7	191
Bolivia	363	1315744	37	102	8.9	41
Guatemala	161	3111013	41	254	38.5	4
Germany	296	12085591	72	243	0.8	370
Hong Kong	450	10307431	85	189	0.2	2252
Greece	351	7805403	60	171	1.5	234
Georgia	216	2395096	79	367	4.3	50
Denmark	196	18448664	83	423	0.9	218
Dominican Republic	312	2980822	38	122	25	12
Zimbabwe	231	190706	41	177	14.3	16
Israel	385	8056333	70	182	2.1	183
India	129	2575396	74	573	3.4	38
Jordan	121	5292749	84	693	1.8	67
Ireland	322	12280378	62	193	1.2	268
Spain	387	7704141	58	150	0.8	484
Italy	376	7999898	61	162	0.9	418
Kazakhstan	444	2839779	52	117	8.8	50
Canada	204	19265603	76	373	1.6	127
Qatar	485	43208585	87	179	0.9	539
Kenya	105	1614564	35	335	20.1	5
Cyprus	491	4318326	65	132	1.7	289
Colombia	344	2742411	45	131	33.4	10
Costa Rica	276	4274215	44	159	11.3	24
Cat d'Ivoire	83	2350539	47	566	56.9	1
Latvia	432	3333573	44	102	3.1	139
Lebanon	578	2501836	56	97	2.2	263
Lithuania	323	5305550	29	90	6.6	49
Morocco	165	2930937	75	455	1.4	118
Mexico	371	3719623	44	119	22.7	16
Nepal	201	637825	43	213	2.8	72
Nicaragua	168	1811570	49	291	13.6	12
Paraguay	332	1672016	40	121	11.5	29
Peru	320	3003149	43	134	10.3	31
Poland	250	7553424	61	244	1.1	228
Portugal	444	5218503	62	140	1.2	370
Russia	634	2465089	31	49	10.2	62
Romania	213	5576858	51	240	2	106
Salvador	332	2090331	43	129	69.2	5
Singapore	392	16993757	98	250	0.3	1307
Syria	11	57023268	84	7998	2.3	5
Slovenia	383	7302212	79	206	1.5	255
USA	227	20604772	75	330	4.2	54
Thailand	297	2866492	65	219	4.8	62
Türkiye	482	2835656	42	87	3.3	146
Uganda	112	1133266	51	454	36.3	3
Ukraine	389	1735384	31	80	5.2	75
Uruguay	508	2795755	46	91	5.9	86
Philippines	136	3004149	66	485	5.4	25
France	333	10276628	59	177	1.1	302
Czech Republic	418	6288372	60	144	1.7	246
Chile	213	7586157	42	197	3.2	67
Switzerland	216	20013537	76	353	0.7	308
Sweden	216	17711364	69	319	1	216
Sri Lanka	326	1648193	72	221	3.6	91
Ecuador	283	2996531	38	134	18.2	16
Estonia	338	5477293	60	177	5.2	65
Japan	204	16978058	73	358	0.4	510

* Do you feel safe, walking alone at night in the city or the area where you live? The percentage of those who answered "yes"