Rule of Law and Access to Justice: Construction of an Accessibility Index of Primary Justice Fora in Paraguay

Abstract

The objective of the study is to create an index that measures the population’s spatial accessibility to primary justice fora in Paraguay. The data used for the analysis include households registered in the 2012 census, with their corresponding geographic coordinates, as well as all available geodata for selected justice-related public services within the same studied area. The methodology proposed is the application of a minimum distance analysis, together with a point proximity buffer analysis. Results show that women have slightly better accessibility to these services than men: they tend to live closer to said facilities have more options at hand. Additionally, findings show that the spatial accessibility improves as population size increases, with the caveat that, as a country historically heavily centralized around its capital, a “gravity” effect can be seen as districts closest to Asuncion exhibit a very high accessibility index, while those farthest from it experience the opposite.