THE DIVISION OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CRIMINOLOGY
 

One Year Later: Graduate Fellowship Winner

Valentina Pavlović
University of Zagreb
Interview by Marijana Maja Kotlaja, Missouri State University, USA

1) Your work is truly impressive. Please share a few important (and also surprising) findings discussed in your most recent work, “Research on Frequency and Readiness of Students in Post Socialist Countries of Southeast Europe to Report Criminal Offenses.” What are some lessons learned?
“Research on Frequency and Readiness of Students in Post Socialist Coun-tries of Southeast Europe to Report Criminal Offenses” is the international scientific project, I have conducted, thanks to the DIC Graduate Fellowship. Under the supervision of Associate Professor Irena Cajner Mraović. I sur-veyed 1,419 students in seven post-socialist countries of southeast Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia). The goal of this project was to research the frequency and readiness of students in post-socialist countries of southeast Europe to report crimes and the differences among them in regards to previous victimi-zation experience, level of trust in the police, attitudes towards the police, as well as social values and socio-demographic characteristics.

From this survey, a massive amount of data was retrieved; and thus, a lot of interesting findings came to light. When I finished collecting the data, I spent an entire day and night looking at SPSS analyzing the results; I was ecstatic! Although I did a lot of analyses, I think I have enough data to analyze for another five years, because the more answers I get, the more questions that arise! From those, which I have already published or presented at some international scientific conferences, I can tell in general for students from southeast Europe, as well those from the West, many factors influence their willingness and the decision to report crimes, some of these being: socio-demographic characteristics, prior victimization, trust in police, social values, etc.,

From my last published paper, which I wrote with my supervisor Dr. Mraović, an interesting finding was that students from southeast Europe were not willing to report corruption and that willingness to report corruption was posi-tively correlated with conformity and police effectiveness. Furthermore, there are interesting findings from another paper as well, which won the University of Zagreb rector’s award in A Category for the best student scientific paper. I wrote it with my colleague, Marijan Vinogradac, a master’s student of psy-chology. We presented the results related to security as a social and person-al value among students from SE Europe. Results showed that there was a difference in security between the countries of south-eastern Europe con-cerning the state and gender, the experience of the war, membership in the European Union, and the NATO alliance. We found a statistically significant positive correlation between security as value and age, year study, religiosi-ty, size of place of birth, and confidence in the police. The results also showed that security was ranked higher than most social values, suggesting that security to the young people in south-eastern Europe was important.

In another paper, Vinogradac and I investigated the reasons for not reporting property crimes. Results from that study showed that trust in police was very important in the victim’s decision as well as cooperation between citizens and the police. Furthermore, there are a couple of papers that I am in the process of publishing and presenting at some conferences, in which I investigate the relationship between will-ingness to report crimes and prior victimization and willingness to report in relation to the experience of contact with the police. Currently, I am also working on studies where I investigate willingness to report domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and cyberbullying among minorities on social media.

Besides reporting crimes, many new topics have opened up. For example, I wrote one paper with Dr. Jelena Pavičić Vukičević, about the importance of power as a value among students in SE Europe, and there are a couple of papers about values I am in the process of writ-ing now. Currently, I am finishing my master’s thesis about values as predictors of trust in police in SE Europe.

2. What are some of the biggest challenges for you personally in conducting research on this topic? Did you find conducting this research in South-eastern Europe to be difficult?
Since I am still a master’s student, everything I did was one big adventure for me! Every single piece of the project was new to me, and I had to put a lot of effort to achieve all the goals I had set for myself. Thanks to the City of Zagreb Scholarship for Excellence, which I got this academic year, I could afford to use all my free time in addition to my student responsibilities to work on the project. If I did not have this extenuating circumstance, I am not sure I would have had enough time to write all these papers and go to all these conferences, be-cause I would have had to make a living. I did not find conducting this research to be difficult, but it required complete dedication and hard work. Luckily, my supervisor Dr. Mraović was always there for all my questions, and had done a great deal of work reviewing my manu-scripts and giving me feedback as well as recommending what conferences I should sign up for and to which journals I should submit my papers to. Most importantly, in addition to my family, she was my most significant support.

Although researching seven countries by myself was a challenge and not easy, I am delighted that I did it! I'm already thinking about new projects and surveys. I am interested in conducting research about reporting crimes on a representative sample of the general population in the same seven countries in addition to others that I did not get to cover in this project, e.g. Kosovo, Albany and/or Greece. I’d also be interested in conducting similar research in other countries around the world. I am currently looking into PhD programs and don't know where life will take me.

3) Is there anything that you would have done differently if you had a chance.
I am delighted with how I conducted the research, and maybe, if I had more time and money, I would do the same research on a representa-tive sample. However, I still have time for that.

4) What do you think the future of criminology and criminal jus-tice research looks like for south-eastern Europe? Where do you see the field going in ten years from now? What should young researchers in interested in this area of study focus on? Any ad-vice?
All countries in which I conducted my survey are post-socialist. They are all young democracies, and one can still feel the breath of times past here. This unique climate provides ample opportunity for re-search. Unfortunately, funding is often the problem - but there are always solutions for those who are interested. An excellent example of this is the DIC Graduate Fellowship! What I would advise young re-searchers is perseverance, hard work and a love of research; every-thing else will come by itself. Besides that, self-confidence is crucial for young researchers. For example, from my experience, when I went to my first scientific conferences as a student, other scientists looked at me suspiciously. However, when I presented my work, experienced scientists became interested in both my work and me, asked me ques-tions, and suggested various collaborations to me.

Furthermore, if someone said to me a couple of years ago that I would conduct this research and go to real conferences, I would not believe that I could do something like that. However, I've learned to believe in myself from my supervisor, Dr. Mraović, and now everything looks possible. With more self-confidence, everything else arrived: I got an invitation to write an article about high school students' reactions to violence; then, I was invited to be a co-author on an article about ser-vice-learning. After the conference, I started some collaborations with researchers from Serbia, North Macedonia, and from the Croa-tian Police College. There is much work to be done, so I in-clude my peers in the project. Also, a number of the projects mentioned above are vital to the process of garnering ideas for my master’s thesis.

The future of criminology and criminal justice research in southeast Europe depends on several factors: first, it is essen-tial to understand the importance of the social sciences in gen-eral, and then the importance of criminology and criminal jus-tice too. The most famous Croatian sociologist, Josip Županov, said “society is democratic insofar as it only wants to explore and learn about itself” and I agree with him (Županov, 1984: 27). A society cannot develop until it realizes its problems and challenges, the same as a car cannot be repaired until the fault is diagnosed. Then, it is crucial to put excellence first and fore-most. Finally, invest in the development of science, to love science and to live for science!