Original scientific paper

Law Student Attitudes towards the Criminal Law System

Marina Ajduković ; Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Barbara Herceg ; Faculty of Law, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Ivana Radić ; Faculty of Law, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Ante Novokmet ; Faculty of Law, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Ivan Vukušić ; Faculty of Law, University of Split, Split, Croatia

Abstract

The paper presents the attitudes of students towards the criminal law system. The research was carried out on a sample of 362 students of the third, fourth and fifth years of the Faculties of Law in Osijek (N=100), Split (N=90) and Zagreb (N=172). The research was conducted by means of the Attitude Scale for the Criminal Law System. It consists of 28 statements pertaining to the attitudes towards laws and criminal policy, the police, the State Attorney's Office, judges and attorneys. The participants had to select a degree of agreement with each statement on a scale from 1 to 5. The overall result ranges from 28 to 140. No significant differences in the general attitudes towards the criminal law system were found between the answers provided by the participants from the three participating Faculties of Law. The basic assumption that law students have a generally more positive attitude towards the criminal law system compared to that of students of social work and psychology was confirmed. More specifically, the law students expressed a mildly negative attitude (M=74.56; SD=12.37), while the psychology students had a moderately negative attitude (M=67.14; SD=10.33).
Although the law students expressed a mildly to moderately negative attitude towards all aspects of the criminal law system, they seemed to be most critical of the police, and expressed the most positive attitude towards the State Attorney's Office. The correlations between all aspects of the criminal law system are statistically significant and range from 0.29 to 0.53 (p<0.01). The highest correlation is found between the attitude towards the State Attorney's Office and the judges. The results suggest that in a substantial number of statements (15 of 28) more than one third of the law students expressed a neutral attitude, i.e. they neither agree nor disagree with the statements. Particular attention was given to this fact in the analysis of the results.

Keywords

criminal law system; law students; attitudes

Hrčak ID:

93203

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/93203

Publication date:

8.10.2012.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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