Contested constructions of trust in the juridical system of Argentina

Abstract

In 2014 the Attorney General of Argentina opened the pathway to install local offices in urban slums to facilitate access to the juridical system for the most underserved sectors of society. The initiative, ATAJO - the Territorial Agency for Access to Justice, attempts to strengthen civic rights, explore social prevention of crime, and build trust-based relations with state bureaucracy. Using the example of the ATAJO office in the informal settlement Villa 1-11-14 in Buenos Aires, I trace how legal actors carefully attempt to develop trust-based relations. I show how their practices of trust building correspond to how the legal professionals themselves perceive the institution they are representing and how this perception then shapes their actions.

Keywords:

• Argentina
• institutional trust
• access to justice
• state actors’ perception of justice

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Agencias Territoriales de Acceso a al Justicia.

2 For further information on the program see: http://www.fiscales.gob.ar/atajo/ (Accessed February 26 2018). The original resolution to install the program is available in the following link: http://www.mpf.gov.ar/resoluciones/pgn/2014/PGN-1316-2014-001.pdf (Accessed February 26 2018). A detailed description of the intentions and measures is given by Julián Axat (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under Grant 271307114.