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Maybe it was trying marijuana and cocaine at age 12. Maybe it was because of her mother’s abuse and the starvation that her four siblings suffered since they were little, or because of her ex-husband’s beatings. Erenia Cerdas cannot recognize the first step in her life that went wrong. He realizes that his addiction to crack cocaine took away the reins of his life when he was barely 21 years old. Everything that came after that happened automatically. I even agree with wearing it Some wood to the Cocorí prison in central Costa Rica, not knowing that they were loaded with weed. However, this is the best thing that could have happened to him.
At this point he was living on the streets, begging for money to consume. He had been through 16 rehabilitation centers and ten years ago he was deprived of custody of his three children, two twins, now 19, and a third, 17. “My life has been centers and drugs, centers and drugs,” he admits at the foot of the ruins of Cartago, an imposing church left half-finished after the Santa Monica earthquake more than a century ago. At the end of November 2021, a friend called Cerdas and asked him for the favor of bringing “some goods for the prisoners’ handicrafts” to the prison. This 38-year-old woman had no problem helping him. Upon arrival, an officer punched the wood and several small packages of marijuana fell out.
Minutes after they arrested them, all the alarms sounded and a shootout ensued: they had seized a much larger shipment. “They used me as a hook [cabeza de turco] “So that something else happens,” she says, still disappointed.
The suspicion of being deceived, her condition as a street dweller and her addiction were decisive for the court-appointed lawyer to request that Cerdas’ case not be dealt with by the regular judiciary. Such a crime would have cost him between eight and ten years in prison before 2013. Since then, however, there has been a kind of asterisk in the criminal code, known as 77 bis, which reduces the sentence from three to eight years if the person involved in the crime is a woman in precarious circumstances, has people in her care or is an old woman.
Erenia Cerdas Otárola, 38 years old, on October 19th. Carlos Herrera
This reduction gives the judge the opportunity to refer the case to an alternative measure to prison; The most punitive is restorative justice, which keeps the defendant from going to prison and gives both victims and perpetrators an opportunity to speak out. Rita Porras, clinical psychologist from the Prevention Projects Department of the Costa Rican Drug Institute, comments that it is very positive for users to know that there is a process in the justice system that allows “second chances” to redress the harm done to people. and the community. “Ultimately, the situation of these women is the result of a vacuum in the state,” explains Zhuyem Molina, judge, public defender in Costa Rica and one of the authors of the restorative justice law. “The state’s response cannot be to punish them for their poverty.”
Restorative justice is a different perspective than the roots. Although criminal justice is based on punishment and isolation, in the Costa Rican model this option suggests talking about conflict rather than crime and reparation rather than condemnation. Thus, the restorative justice law, adopted in 2018 and supported year after year regardless of changes in government, provides for a plan with several meetings between the judge, the prosecutor, psychologists, social workers, the victim (or the civil society representing the party). insulted) and the perpetrator. The requirements are three: it must be the first crime committed, with a sentence of less than three years – excluding cases of violence against women – and that all parties want to solve the problem in this way. An agreement must be reached on how to repair the damage, as is usually provided for, within one month.
In Cerdas’ case, the intent was to be admitted to a detoxification center for seven months and to attend a self-help group for former addicts and do community service for two years. “I chose the Christ-centered Genesis Foundation because it was only because of the hand of God that I got out of that hole,” he says. He is currently leading a team for newcomers and has returned to his youngest son. “I always wanted to change my life and quit drugs. I tried it 16 times but I didn’t know how to do it. “I had no one who could help me,” he explains.
This measure is also a clear commitment to the inclusion of a gender perspective in the courts. In Latin America, 70% of incarcerated women are in prison for microtrafficking crimes. “If you know the X-rays of those who are in there, you realize that the damage to society is much greater if you lock them up, because they are heads of families, single mothers, vulnerable women… and the criminal circles.” When they go hungry, they tend to repeat themselves in their families,” he explains. Coletta Youngers, senior advisor to the American human rights NGO WOLA. “These are not dangerous people who need to be kept away from society.”
Cerdas in front of the ruins of Cartago, southeast of San José (Costa Rica). Carlos Herrera
“This is not a gentle hand or impunity”
But the most conservative sectors don’t see it that way. The commitment to alternatives to prison is diametrically opposed to the speeches of neighboring presidents such as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has based his entire security policy on locking up anyone suspected of having ties to gangs until he has the highest incarceration rate has in the country. World. His speech proved to be a panacea and served as an inspiration for other sectors in Ecuador, Honduras or Colombia, until it permeated society that combines security with an “iron fist” policy.
Celia Medrano, a well-known human rights defender, recalls attempts in 2014 to introduce a law like the Costa Rican one in El Salvador, which affects women forced to use drugs by gang members: “We did a tremendous amount of work, but we never succeeded , that the State Department understood the difference between a woman who does it under blackmail and a woman who doesn’t. We never achieved a differentiated approach. Today it is absolutely unthinkable to suggest such a thing, as the country’s logic is the opposite of “you are free until proven otherwise.” “There are still many critics. Also in Costa Rica,” laments Teodoro Bermúdez, a prosecutor who has been working with this modality since 2014. “Some people think this is pandering. “You are always afraid of the new.”
Jovanna Calderón Altamirano, head of the Restorative Justice Office of the Judiciary of Costa Rica, agrees and believes that the criticism of the restorative process is based on ignorance of the model and this growing “punitive populism”: “People believe that this Trials are very permissive and try to favor the defendant. And it’s not like that, it’s not a gentle hand or impunity. These are processes with a lot of control and monitoring as well as active responsibility for repairing the damage caused.”
In 2022 alone, 2,379 restorative justice cases were completed, with an all-party satisfaction rating of 98%. “It is not an abolitionist model, nor does it seek to end incarceration,” he adds. But he clarifies: “Any type of conflict can be resolved through restorative justice, with qualified personnel, the necessary resources and as long as the will is present on both sides.” Including, says Calderón, crimes of gender-based violence that arise due to feminist pressure movement were excluded from the first bill. “Costa Rican society was not mature enough to understand that this was a very avant-garde law.”
A law that also shows great results, since only 4% of defendants committed new crimes during the two years of judicial supervision. In Colombia, the percentage of prisoners returning to prison for a new crime is 36%. In Chile it is 52.9% and in Mexico it is around 60% of robbery crimes. According to the judiciary, these psychosocial procedures are also much faster (between one and three months) and 86% cheaper than ordinary cases.
Cindy Torres Ortiz.Carlos Herrera
Cindy Torres Ortiz, 33 years old, is one of the 96% of reintegrated people in Costa Rica. It doesn’t occur to her to bring drugs back into prison or to go back to her ex-boyfriend who forced her from prison to do drugs every week for a year. “I was very in love, he made the decisions and I just accepted. It wasn’t a business for me, it didn’t allow me to work for anyone else. She was his employee,” explains the mother of three children. “When they caught me, I was relieved. “I wanted it to end,” he admits. Now Torres has spent virtually five years without drinking and has graduated from high school.
“Continuing to believe that prison is the solution to all our problems is a disaster for Latin America,” says Luis Andrés Fajardo, Deputy Defender of Colombia. Over the last two decades, the prison population in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased by 120%, while in the rest of the world it has increased by only 24%. In addition, one in three prisoners here has not yet been convicted. “The interesting thing about the process is the active role of the perpetrator and the fact that he asks what the victim wants,” explains Fajardo.
This was the question that had in mind the first precursors of this type of criminal law, which emerged in Canada in the mid-1970s and placed a strong focus on the way indigenous communities resolve conflicts: without punishment and with the horizon of reintegration . Restorative justice also played a central role in the peace processes in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Spain.
“I didn’t have that opportunity and I’m paying the consequences.”
The story of Berta Robles (fictional name) did not allow for a second chance. This Nicaraguan with raven eyes and hair welcomes América Futura in a room in the Vilma Curling Rivera prison at the end of October with sweaty hands and averted eyes. She sits on a plastic chair a few meters from the cell where she slept with 25 other women for four years. Take a deep breath and try to rewind.
Berta Robles in a room of the prison where she is currently serving a sentence. Carlos Herrera
She has lived undocumented in Costa Rica for more than 20 years and has had to juggle paying expenses for her five children since her divorce. She devoted herself to prostitution, but the $16 she received per customer wasn’t even enough to cover the rent. “I didn’t want to continue there,” he says. When a colleague told him how “easy” it was to bring drugs into prison, he agreed. Their sweaty hands gave them away to the security guards. “I wasn’t cut out for that, they noticed that straight away,” she complains.
When they first caught her, they gave her the option of using alternative measures other than restorative procedures to get out. There was no circle of words or search for redemption, but rather the transformation of punishment into service to the community. The debt incurred from the seizure of the drugs forced them to try again. The last. In April 2019 she was sentenced to six years in prison. “I didn’t have another chance. “I bear the consequences,” Robles says before a long silence. No dating advice, no graduations, no children’s birthday parties. He says he has lost everything. The day goes by slowly. She studies, works, participates in whatever activities are offered to her, and spends just enough time with her other cellmates. “I just want to get out of here, prison isn’t the best place to change.”