Video surveillance, institutional trust, and citizen security in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The installation of cameras alone does not guarantee greater perceived security or an effective evidentiary use of recordings for citizen safety in the Dominican Republic, due to weaknesses in institutional trust, technical interoperability, and specific legal regulation. In this context, this article aimed to analyze the impact of video surveillance, institutional trust, and the regulatory framework on the perception of citizen security in the Dominican Republic, based on the results of a doctoral research with a mixed-methods approach. In the quantitative component, a Likert-type questionnaire was applied to 728 participants and the data was processed in IBM SPSS Statistics through reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, Pearson correlations, and multiple regression; in the qualitative component, semi-structured interviews were conducted with citizens, authorities, and legal experts, analyzed through thematic coding. The instrument showed a Cronbach's alpha of 0.813 and the model explained 44% of the variance in perceived safety. Institutional trust was the main predictor (β = 0.520), followed by the regulatory framework (β = 0.150) and the perceived effectiveness of the system (β = 0.060). As a contribution, the need for a specific legal standard on video surveillance is supported, one that integrates clear rules, interoperability, chain of custody, institutional control, privacy, and due process, since it is relevant and only has a positive impact when combined with trustworthy institutions, operational capacity, and guarantees of fundamental rights.