Factors that influence trust in the police in Mexico

ABSTRACT

Despite Mexico’s justice reform, most Mexican citizens do not trust in their criminal justice system. Particularly, public dissatisfaction with the police has not been solved in Mexico. Researchers have examined citizens’ trust in the police to improve public-police relationship in Mexico. Relatively less attention, however, has been made to the theoretical framework, which explores factors such as instrumental and expressive factors that influence the public trust in the police. Thus, using a data set from the Latin American Public Opinion Project, this study conducted multiple regressions to find those factors. Results indicated that neighbourhood security (key instrumental factors) was significantly related to trust in the police. In addition, police corruption showed a negative association with trust in police and public satisfaction with police performance. This study found supporting evidence that securing neighbourhoods builds more confidence in the police among residents. Overall, these results suggest meaningful strategies to improve trust in the Mexico’s police.

KEYWORDS:

• Trust in the police
• police performance
• neighbourhood security
• public services
• corruption

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Trust in the police embraces a wide range of favourable feelings or attitudes towards police in previous literature. In general, three dimensions are widely used; perception, trust or confidence, and effectiveness (see Sun et al., 2013). Meanwhile, some studies used one indicator of trust as an independent variable or mediating factor (e.g., Dukes et al., 2009). This study, however, follows the recent trend of operationalisation for trust in the police and utilises two different dimensions to capture the levels of trust in Mexico’s police.

2. Trust in other government agencies was obtained from 5 items (judicial system, armed forces, national legislature, political parties, president, and local government).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hyunin Baek

Hyunin Baek is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Louisville. His research interests include internet deviance, juvenile and adult deviance, police officer’s organizational commitment and competency, confidence in the police, fear of crime, bullying victimization and perpetration, and testing criminological theories. His most recent publications appear or are forthcoming in Journal of School Violence, Deviant Behavior, Asian Journal of Criminology, Race and Justice, and International Journal of Police Science & Management.

Sungil Han

Sungil Han is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Criminal Justice at University of Louisiana, Lafayette. His research interest includes public confidence in the police, fear of crime, immigration and crime, and issues related to communities and crime.

Quinn Gordon

Quinn Gordon is a PhD student in the Criminology Program at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is the Managing Editor for Police Quarterly. His research interests include policing, terrorism, violence and violent crime, and suicide.