World Justice Project Highlights Dominican Republic's Rule-of-Law Progress Amid Police Reform

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic - October 17, 2026 - Independent rule-of-law data and an ongoing transformation of the National Police provide a measurable view of institutional change in the Dominican Republic under President Luis Abinader.

In a year when rule-of-law indicators deteriorated across much of the world, the Dominican Republic moved in the opposite direction.

The country's overall score in the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2025 [https://worldjusticeproject.org/sites/default/files/documents/Dominican%20Republic_3.pdf] increased by 2.1%, the largest annual improvement among the 143 countries and jurisdictions covered by the index.

The result stands out against a broader trend: 68% of countries worldwide recorded a decline, while 24 of the 32 countries assessed in Latin America and the Caribbean also moved backward.

For the Dominican Republic under President Luis Abinader, the numbers offer one independent measure of institutional change at a time when the country is also pursuing a multiyear reform of its National Police.

The two developments should not be treated as cause and effect. Together, however, they provide different ways to examine how security, accountability and institutional capacity are evolving.

Police reform beyond deployment

Security reform in the Dominican Republic increasingly extends beyond the number of officers on the streets.

Between 2023 and 2025, 9,503 new officers entered the National Police, according to government figures. The reform process has also introduced changes in training, supervision, technology and policing models.

In November 2025, another 2,421 officers completed basic training, bringing the number trained under the new educational model to 6,500 at that point. The program places emphasis on discipline, service and modernization [https://presidencia.gob.do/noticias/presidente-abinader-juramenta-2421-nuevos-agentes-con-ello-suman-6500-policias-formados-en], while part of that group was assigned to a pilot patrol model subject to continuous monitoring and evaluation. The institutional dimension has remained visible in 2026.

The Ministry of Interior and Police has emphasized greater supervision, transparency and accountability within the force, including the principle that officers whose conduct violates the law are subject to the corresponding legal processes.

That matters because police reform is not only a question of operational capacity. Its longer-term test is whether an institution can combine effectiveness with professional standards, oversight and predictable rules.

Security results provide another measure

Institutional reform ultimately has to be considered alongside outcomes. Final data validated by the country's Citizen Security Data Analysis Center, or CADSECI [https://www.presidencia.gob.do/noticias/rd-cerro-2025-con-tasa-de-87-homicidios-por-cada-100000-habitantes-segun-el-cadseci], put the Dominican Republic's intentional homicide rate at 8.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, based on 951 recorded cases.

The final figure is particularly relevant because it resulted from an interagency validation and consolidation process rather than relying only on preliminary operational data.

Under the current security strategy, data analysis has become part of how public institutions assess crime patterns and determine interventions. That adds another institutional component to the reform: the ability to measure results consistently and adjust policy based on evidence.

An independent signal on rule of law

The World Justice Project provides a different lens because its index is independent of government reporting.

Its 2025 assessment gives the Dominican Republic an overall rule-of-law score of 0.50, up 2.1% from the previous year.

The improvement is notable not because it places the country at the top of the international rankings - it does not - but because it occurred during a year of widespread deterioration.

The World Justice Project [https://worldjusticeproject.org/news/wjp-rule-law-index-2025-global-press-release] bases its index on more than 215,000 household surveys and 4,100 surveys of legal practitioners and experts worldwide, examining areas that include constraints on government powers, fundamental rights, regulatory enforcement and civil and criminal justice.

For that reason, the Dominican Republic's movement in the index should be read as an external institutional signal rather than as a government performance statistic.

Resilience is built through institutions

The security and rule-of-law indicators measure different things. A homicide rate measures a specific public-safety outcome. Police reform addresses the structure and operation of a key state institution. The WJP Index assesses a much broader set of perceptions and experiences involving the rule of law.

Combining them does not prove that one reform produced another result. It does, however, reveal several institutional developments taking place at the same time.

During the administration of President Abinader, the Dominican Republic has continued a police transformation focused on training, oversight and data-based management while recording an improvement in an independent international measure of the rule of law.

The more useful test of institutional resilience will be whether those changes can be sustained: whether professional standards become embedded in police practice, whether security data remain transparent and comparable, and whether improvements in rule-of-law indicators persist over time.

For the Dominican Republic, that is a more meaningful measure of reform than any single ranking or security statistic. Institutional resilience is ultimately built when measurable results are supported by institutions capable of maintaining them.

About the World Justice Project

The World Justice Project is an independent organization working to advance the rule of law worldwide. Its Rule of Law Index assesses countries and jurisdictions across multiple dimensions of governance, justice, fundamental rights and institutional accountability. More information is available at

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This release was published on openPR.