QCOSTARICA — Drug violence and homicides would continue to rise in 2024 if there is no change in legislation that allows hitmen (sicarios in Spanish) to be put behind bars, warns President Rodrigo Chaves.
To achieve this, criminal regulations must be modified to apply a “hard-handed policy” to restrict the granting of prison benefits, such as bail and early release which must be limited.
Otherwise, it is very possible that the situation that Costa Rica is experiencing today will be repeated next year and even worse, that it will continue to increase.
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That is the warning by the country’s the president following 2023 ending with an unprecedented 908 homicides, some 40% more compared to 2022.
The war between criminal gangs for territory and drug trafficking routes has caused a bloodbath never before seen in the country.
“Article 121 of the Constitution states that it is the exclusive responsibility of the Legislative Assembly to approve, reform and interpret the laws. If there is no reform to the current criminal regulations, I suspect that we will have the same year in this matter,” Chaves said in an interview with La Republica.
In the interview, the president explained that he, as head of the Executive Branch, does his job; However, he was emphatic that a response from the Legislative Assembly is required to change the current panorama.
In that sense, Chaves referred to a more firm policy.
“The problem is that Costa Rica, starting in 1998 during the government of José María Figueres and the governments that followed, especially during the administrations of Laura Chinchilla and Luis Guillermo Solís, began to become affectionate and generous with criminals and relaxed their laws. At the same time, they gave them (criminals) more execution benefits, that is, that is the true cause of the problem and not necessarily the lack of money,” said the president.
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For Chaves, the response to crime is to fix the legal framework to put in jail those who are at war and killing themselves over drugs.
“The only way to avoid this cycle of destruction is to put these people in jail. What does it take to put someone in jail? Laws that allow it and a Judicial Branch that executes them. I’m talking about putting the firmness that is needed in the face of the challenge of the moment,” Chaves concluded.
On several occasions, the president has pointed out that today criminals are getting out faster after being arrested than the police can do the paperwork.
Difficult situation
Applying a heavy-handed security policy against drug trafficking, organized crime and homicides is not possible in Costa Rica, according to several opposition legislators*.
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The country must guarantee due criminal process, as well as the human rights of all those involved, including criminals, they say publicly.
On the other hand, any legal reform that is approved must take into account the comprehensiveness of the situation, avoid populism and prison overcrowding so as not to violate the international agreements that the country has signed.
“With a single action, like putting people in jail, we are not going to solve all the problems. We must think that we are also a country of guarantees; That is, any decision we make must not forget the principle of innocence, that the accused have a lawyer and that due process is complied with,” Vanessa Castro, a Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC or now being promoded as UNIDAD), has told the media repeatadly.
In addition to the UNIDAD, legislators from the Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN) and Nueva Republica warned that the proposals that President Chaves has made to stop crime not only violate human rights, but in some cases contravene the Constitution.
In that sense, Óscar Izquierdo, head of the PLN fraction, the party with the single largest block of legislators (19 of the 57 seats of the the unicameral legislative branch of the Costa Rican government), calls not to make decisions “in the heat of the moment.”
“There are government projects that were analyzed by the Department of Technical Services and that have been warned that they have some issues with unconstitutionality. It is not about approving projects in the heat of the moment,” Izquierdo said.
Limits
One of the issues promoted by President Rodrigo Chaves is to limit the granting of prison benefits.
The president presented a bill that granting of precautionary measures is limited only for crimes that have sentences of less than 4 years in prison.
Regarding the sentence of house arrest with electronic monitoring, it is proposed to lower the sentence imposed from six years, as it currently exists, to four years in prison so that the judges can grant this type of sanction. In this way, rapists and people with criminal records of drug trafficking, organized crime and murderers or hitmen will not be able to leave prison with provisional measures.
OIJ will not longer give projections
Last year the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) began to release data on the growing number of homicides impacting the country, warning about a 2023 that would break records, which ended in reality: 900 homicides, some 40% more than the previous year.
The 908 could be even higher, that is no data has been made available for the night of December 31.
This year, each month, sometimes weekly, the OIJ revealed projections about homicides, in an effort to raise public awareness and possibly pressure the legislative branch to act. However, for 2024, this could change, in the words of Randall Zúñiga, director of the OIJ,d “they do not see it advisable to continue doing so, unless the numbers increase significantly”.
“We always do this analysis exercise, what happens is that we never comment on it because it is always similar, in 2023 we had to go out to all the media to say what was going to happen to see what actions could be done preventively or proactively,” said reitereated Zúñiga.
*Legislators are elected for four years in office and cannot be successively reelected. There are only three requirements to qualify for the position: Be a citizen; To be Costa Rican by birth, or by naturalization with ten years of residence in the country after having obtained nationality; Be at least twenty one years old.
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