Local human rights organizations (LHROs) play a central role as intermediaries for citizens and advocates for police and justice reform. Public trust is essential for LHROs to be effective. This study asks whether crime reduces that trust—creating a “rights trap” that undermines LHRO legitimacy and prompts government retrenchment—or increases it, producing a “rights amplifier” that strengthens rights observance.

🔎 What Was Examined

• The relationship between crime (including individual victimization) and public trust in LHROs.
• Two competing mechanisms: a “rights trap” (crime weakens trust and legitimacy) versus a “rights amplifier” (crime increases trust and LHRO efficacy).

📊 What the Data Show

• Data source: 2014 The Americas and the World/Human Rights Perceptions Polls.
• Key finding: effects of crime on LHRO trust vary with local security and institutional context.
• Specific pattern: victimization reduces trust in LHROs in high-crime communities but increases trust in LHROs in low-crime communities.
• Overall implication: crime can trigger both rights traps and rights amplifiers depending on context.

💡 Why It Matters

• The results complicate assumptions that crime uniformly undermines civil-society actors; instead, context determines whether citizen support for LHROs erodes or grows.
• This nuance is consequential for efforts to promote police and justice reform, for LHRO strategies to maintain legitimacy, and for policymakers concerned with rights observance under rising criminal violence.