Costa Rica: ¿un nuevo modelo para las normas penitenciarias en América Latina?
El hacinamiento en las cárceles es algo generalizado en América Latina. Sin embargo, Costa Rica ha empezado a aplicar de forma gradual reformas políticamente sensibles pero necesarias. Entre ellas, se cuentan programas de formación profesional y el rechazo de las leyes de imposición de penas más duras. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.
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By Geoff Thale and Adriana Beltran, WOLA
Prison overcrowding is a widespread problem in Latin America, primarily because of harsh drug-sentencing laws and inadequate budgets, but Costa Rica may be setting a useful example for dealing with it. In most countries, guards control the perimeter, but groups of prisoners or criminal gangs organize and control life inside the prison compound. Rehabilitation and re-integration programs are limited.
Not surprisingly, there is little political leadership for prison reform; the issue wins few points with the general public. Even dramatic events – like prison riots in Venezuela or prison fires in which hundreds of young men die as in Honduras – don’t generate interest in prison reform. A key component of the criminal justice system – as a deterrent, a punishment, and as a provider of rehabilitation and reintegration services that will reduce recidivism – the prisons are often neglected.
While Costa Rica faces growing drug-related problems, a multi-country analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America of persistent criminal justice and prison problems in Latin America – aimed at identifying strategic solutions – indicates that the country stands out as having undertaken at least modest reforms of its prisons to prevent them from becoming the breeding grounds for increasingly hardened criminals and gangs.
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