Communist Party of Chile fights against bill on lowering age of criminal responsibility

Representative Salinas asserted that the measure lacks evidence to support its effectiveness and ultimately worsens about children and adolescents who are currently being recruited by organized crime. 

The congressman, who sits on the Chamber's Citizen Security Committee, argued that the initiative will not help reduce crime and questioned the Executive's insistence on a policy based on harsher penalties. "We will not support this under any circumstances, lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 13 because we know it has zero effect, and what's more, it does a double blow to a young person," he stated. 

Salinas pointed out that the project responds to a purely punitive logic and warned that lowering the age of criminal responsibility implies stripping rights from minors who are still in the process of development. “Once again, the government is imposing its punitive agenda. This idea of lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 13 for a child—more than an adolescent, they are still a child—to charge them with a crime. We know that today there are indeed young people, children, who are being exploited or who commit crimes. But lowering the age, taking away their rights, pushing them further into criminality, making them targets of kidnapping by organized crime, drug trafficking, and even common criminals… comparative evidence worldwide establishes that this has zero effect, absolutely zero,” he continued. 

The congressman also criticized the government for pushing through initiatives of this kind, despite the constitutional challenges similar proposals have faced in the past: “this is simply, as always, a public relations exercise. The same thing happened with previous bills: they wanted to curtail rights, and the Constitutional Court ruled that a constitutionally guaranteed right, such as Article 19 of the Political Constitution of the State, cannot be restricted.” 

He added that the proposal “is also a punishment, a double punishment, for a young person, a child, who is still in their formative years, and in whom we must invest socially, give them opportunities, and not corner them or take away their rights.” 

Finally, the congressman pointed out that the State's response to the involvement of children and adolescents in crime should focus on prevention and reintegration, rather than increasing criminal punishment. “What should the State do? Provide them with the tools and capacity to effectively reintegrate them into the educational system, give them economic, social, and psychosocial support; even for those struggling with drug addiction, provide programs specifically designed for their reintegration into society, but never condemn them as the Government is currently doing, which only reinforces its punitive agenda,” he concluded.