Confidence in the police in Latin America

The study of confidence in the police in Latin America is rare, partially for lack of interest and partially for lack of reliable data. Social, economic, and political instability in those countries also contributes to the problem. Relying on data from the World Values Surveys 1995–1997, the current research proposed a theory of the police in transitional societies and reported the results of analyses of confidence in the police in nine countries of Latin America. The levels of confidence in the police in the nine Latin American nations were compared with that of the U.S. The inclusion of a heterogeneous set of control variables in the multivariate analysis yielded several consistent predictors of confidence in the police. Similar to the findings in the U.S., confidence in the police in Latin America was part of the broader attitude complex. Different from the findings in the U.S., confidence in the police was positively related to one's employment status and religiosity, and negatively to income.