Following two abhorrent homicides committed by minors in Argentina, Javier Milei’s government included, by decree in the extraordinary sessions, a review of the juvenile criminal regime to lower the age of criminal responsibility. The year that ended showed us how different leaders have appealed to the punitive reflex as a campaign proposal. Donald Trump, Javier Milei, and José Antonio Kast made harsher penalties a banner of governance.
The argument is not false. Legislation is essential to define which behaviors a State accepts or rejects. The likelihood of being detained by the police increases the cost of committing a crime. And a judiciary independent from political power and sectoral pressures is a basic condition for legal and personal security. But taken to the extreme, the punitive approach has costs: it undermines individual and political rights.
Michel Foucault described utopian hyper-surveilled societies. There are real and nearby cases of pacification through a heavy hand, such as Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, as well as regimes where the armed arm does not serve justice but political leadership, as in Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, and China.
Beyond the infringement of rights, the coercive strengthening of the State has its own structural limits. Increased patrolling and harsher sentences may reduce crime, but they are not enough: they leave out other public policies and actions by civil society. The relevant question is, beyond how severe punishment should be, what is the most efficient way to prevent crime.
The criminal system arrives late
Relying solely on individual will to choose virtuous paths is an act of shortsighted and imprudent faith. Crime does not occur in a vacuum; it is embedded in personal histories, school trajectories, families, neighborhoods, possible and impossible jobs, accumulated stigmas, and lack of opportunities. When the criminal system enters the scene, it is already too late: there are victims and damage.
Comparative evidence shows that in countries with lower levels of crime (Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland), security is not conceived as an emergency but as a long-term public policy. Many prisons are closed because they are unnecessary when policies and institutions anticipate problems: early education, mental health care, urban planning, employment, community networks, and a professional police force. Security is not achieved by toughening sentences, but by reducing the conditions that foster delinquency.
There are alternative experiences to the classic penal logic that model paths in which multiple actors become involved. Restorative justice models seek to overcome both the State’s expropriation of conflict and the focus on punishment or rehabilitation centered solely on the offender. They take into account the victim, the harm caused, and the social fabric.
In Spain, the Unblock Foundation works with young prisoners or those at risk of exclusion. Its president, Carlos Trenor, states: “When someone leaves prison, they are the same person, only older. In many cases, they are worse. In this way, neither victims, nor taxpayers, nor the convicted themselves are protected.” For this reason, Unblock seeks to accompany those leaving prison to rebuild their self-esteem, break the “ex-offender” label, and remove people from the circuits that push them to reoffend. The program costs less than a year in prison and achieves what confinement rarely does: it reduces recidivism and generates preventive effects that multiply within the convicted person’s environment.
From Mar del Plata, the Gaia Program, developed in the Batán Penitentiary Unit, proposes a multidimensional approach to unlawful behavior. Based on the analysis of oral trials, testimonies, and expert reports, Judge Mariana Irianni frequently identifies a foundational trauma behind repeated criminal behavior. The program’s therapeutic and psychoeducational work has reduced violence among those serving prison sentences. Without understanding the origin of the harm, recidivism is not an anomaly: it is a foreseeable consequence.
Against all intuition
High-impact crimes, on which the reactive and punitive proposal relies, dominate the public imagination; however, they do not represent the majority of cases that saturate the justice system. Within the broad spectrum of crimes and minor offenses, there is ample room to intervene before harm escalates.
But even in contexts of extreme violence, there are programs that demonstrate pacifying success where the punitive apparatus fails. After an attempted homicide at the Ron Santa Teresa estate in Venezuela, the Alcatraz Project was born—unusually given the national context. It combines sports, job training, and mentoring, through which eleven criminal gangs were disarmed and homicides in the municipality of Revenga were reduced, according to local data, from 147 per 100,000 inhabitants to just two. Andrés Chumaceiro, the estate’s COO, draws a suggestive parallel: “Making good rum requires time, mastery, and patience; transforming biographies does too. There is no magic wand: there is a difficult return to the community, but by reshaping the environment and allowing those who committed crimes to forgive themselves, progress is possible.”
The law is essential, prison is necessary, and while relying exclusively on punishment brings an immediate sense of security, it impoverishes the debate and merely postpones the problem. A Venezuelan estate, a foundation in Madrid, and a penitentiary unit in Mar del Plata share a common thread: crime decreases when various actors in society interact with the criminal system and feel responsible for the outcome.
In response to the demand for security, those in government have the opportunity to explore and honestly address the causes, to admit that the problem goes beyond the prison and police system, and to invite politics, civil society, the private sector, and foundations to work in coordination. Preventing crime requires time, investment, and shared responsibility—and the results do not always align with the next electoral calendar. Security is not decreed; it is built.
Autor
BA in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), specialization in International Relations, diploma from the INCAP School of Government. Analyst at the Institute for International Security and Strategic Affairs (ISIAE/CARI).
