“More opportunities than penalties” requested the Episcopal Social Pastoral Commission in Argentina, by rejecting the bill that seeks to lower the age at which minors can go to jail.
Promoted by the Ministry of National Security, the project seeks to reduce the rates of violence and crime, allowing minors to go to jail from the age of 13. In recent weeks, officials related to Javier Milei’s government They asked the Congress greater speed In your treatment.
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Given this scenario, the Episcopal Social Pastoral Commission issued a declaration in which he considers that “it is not about lowering the age of imputability, but about assuming deep changes” to respond to “a reality that challenges us.”
His message puts the focus that “for many years, Argentine society has been suffering from the consequences of political administrations that have not been able to create a culture of work that included all inhabitants and allow all families to live with dignity and seek the necessary assets for authentic human, labor, social, economic and psychoactive development.”
“This has caused countless problems, among which is insecurity and youth crime,” he says.
While expressing “solidarity with so many people who have been victims of violence, some of them for crimes committed by minors, sometimes with extreme violence that leave difficult injuries to close”, the bishops alerted about “the proposals that focus on minors, as if they were the only ones and numerically more responsible for crimes.”
In this context, the Social Pastoral went to official statistics of the National Criminal Information System-System Alertma (SNIC-SAT) of the Ministry of Security of the Nation to ensure that “minors are not the ones who commit the most crimes.”
“The minors accused of crimes make up a very low percentage of the total,” he says, putting as an example the robberies of Automotores, where the accused under 15 were only 4.74% of the total and the defendants of 16 and 17 years represented 8.75% in 2023.
In the case of malicious homicides, those responsible under 14 were only 0.64% and those accused between 15 and 19, 13.12%.
The bishops of the Social Pastoral also raise the need to open the debate so that not only judges, communicators, political leaders and citizens participate, many of them victims of crimes.
“The reality is more diverse and the problem of youth crime is crossed by a huge amount of factors, which make the voices of specialists as psychologists, psychiatrists, psychopedagogues and teachers necessary. These opinions qualified in the media debates do not appear so often,” warns the members of the Episcopal Commission.
And they add: “When these voices are heard, the most complex approaches to the problem, the proposal to lower the age of imputability does not seem to be the most reasonable.”
Instead, they call to focus on drug trafficking, which “is gaining territory in our country and expanding its businesses, leaving and destroyed a lot of lives and families, particularly young people.”
“Drugs are destroying them and consumption is one of the main causes of violence. The drug continues to easily penetrate our neighborhoods and villages. Therefore, it is necessary to combat drug trafficking. But little is said about this,” they regret.
On the other hand, they call to ask “what world we are creating adults for the growth and development of children and young people.” In this regard, they point out that “many grow without opportunities for a good education or a necessary work training, or family and social containment”, so they consider it necessary to “promote a culture of care that guarantees the conditions for the integral and full development of each person.”
They also question: “If the decrease in imputability age is concretized, where are they going to recruit the minors? What are the appropriate devices in the provinces to accommodate adolescents and young people who commit crimes? What real alternatives do we have to offer, educate and reinsert them socially?”
“We consider that it is not necessary to modify the age, although a youth/adolescent criminal regime that has a human, integral look, open to hope,” they say.
“For an inclusive, fraternal, developed country project, what do we need?, More prisons or more schools? More guardiats or more teachers with decent and trained wages? Any reform of the youth criminal regime must focus on social reintegration and education,” they argue.
The Social Pastoral Commission agrees in the desire to build “a viable country, with peace, without violence and with possibilities for all”, and for this, it asks for “political greatness”: that the national State, the provincial and municipal states and the political leadership take a preponderant role.
At the same time, the presence of “the leaders of social movements, the trade unionists, the clubs, the religious, the businessman and citizens” stand out, whose contribution is necessary to “expand the opportunities of education, training, of closeness with children, adolescents and vulnerable young people”, to overcome the indifference and “culture of discarding”.
Remembering the words that Pope Francis pronounced in March 2020, just started the pandemic, the bishops conclude: “We are all in the same boat and we save together or we all sink.”
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.