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Rolando Ochoa, Senior Researcher, Asia Pacific Centre for the Prevention of Crime, Griffith University and Senior Associate, Australian National Centre of Latin American Studies, The Australian National University

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Larry Saha Room, HA2175, Level 2, Haydon-Allen Building, The Australian National University

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mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Kidnapping has become one of the most salient threats to public safety in Mexico and one of the most important "high impact" crimes on the public agenda. Research has shown that kidnapping in Mexico is largely facilitated by persons close to the victim such as employees or family members, a fact that has been called the "treason phenomenon". During the period 2000-2011 kidnapping gangs began targeting working and middle-class victims as - among other factors - wealthy Mexicans improved their protection strategies and became more difficult targets. This paper analyses the protection strategies of wealthy potential victims and uses trust and signaling theory to illustrate the ways in which this group, taking into account the "treason phenomenon" selects household employes. Based on twelve months of field research including 90 interviews and the gathering of close to 2,000 reports on kidnapping the paper argues that over time a cognitive process has allowed the group analysed to perfect ways to ascertain potential employees' trustworthiness, thus minimising the risk of being kidnapped. This allows for insights into decision-making processes in environments of low state protection.