Since the 1970s, the same policies of mass incarceration of those who produce and sell drugs have been maintained. The result of those tactics was a resounding failure, according to the author. The deployment of federal forces in Rosario has been repeated since 2013 and there also does not seem to have been much progress in relation to drug trafficking.
(For eldiarioAR)
The recovery of assets from organized crime gives the State and social organizations the opportunity to have an innumerable amount of resources to support and develop new policies in the neglected areas in the fight against complex criminal organizations. The National Congress is currently facing a bill that could be the starting point for the creation of this new system.
Drug trafficking is a postmodern human phenomenon that began in the mid-1950s and has not stopped growing since then. When it was identified in the early 1970s as a phenomenon that brings serious consequences, the centers of economic, political and military power - basically the United States - spread the tactic of attacking the supply of drugs, raising the price and discouraging demand, a mechanism that continues to be implemented ad nauseam in all areas of the economy. In the case of drug trafficking, a process of mass imprisonment was also established for those involved in the production, transportation and trade of drugs. The result of these tactics was a resounding failure. Although there were major merchants of death imprisoned or killed, the majority of those convicted or killed were easily replaceable links in the criminal chain.
In 2000, and after a series of debates regarding the failure of these tactics, the United Nations (UN) held the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in the city of Palermo – the capital of the island of Sicily – from which – in addition to maintaining these old tactics – the persecution of money laundering was promoted, that of the links that facilitate and favor the criminal continuity of organizations. Countries around the world began to celebrate agreements, passed laws and created specialized institutions with the objective of identifying and recovering the profits generated by complex criminal organizations. And while the results have been beneficial, certain problems continued and many new ones began to emerge.
Among the former is the securitization of a phenomenon that should definitely include –in addition to security and justice– other key areas of life in society: health, education, work, housing and culture. Among the latter, the almost non-existent development of new tools by State agencies in relation to the management and destination of all the assets recovered from complex criminal organizations.
“Politics is not the arrival, it is the path, it is the initiation of processes,” was what Pope Francis stated in a conference and in relation to the issues of complex organized crime, no new process has been initiated. Now, what is happening in Argentina?
The toughening of sentences is raised time and again despite the fact that the majority of people in prison are not convicted; decidedly pragmatic security plans are announced and implemented that fail to stop criminal activity and much less improve the living conditions of the people who are most harmed by this type of organization. There are many examples of this type: the Cinturon Sur plan to saturate the poor neighborhoods of Buenos Aires with federal forces has been going on for more than ten years and at times has only managed to prevent the situation from getting worse; the Bandera plan in Rosario that was quickly dismantled due to the need to have troops for the demonstrations; and even the Argentina without bunkers plan, dedicated to demolishing precarious shacks where cheap and very low-quality drugs are bought and sold.
In Rosario, since 2013, federal forces have been deployed with the aim of saturating the poor neighborhoods with troops, but more than ten years later, the plans remain the same and with the same results; a hammer is still used with more or less force, but on a screw. Nor were long-term intervention programs developed with defined objectives, where the other areas of the State - economy, work, health, sports, education, culture - are those that define the comprehensive programs that can end up depleting complex criminal organizations of resources, territoriality and symbolism.
The modern penitentiary policy of Salvadoran President Nayid Bukele spread like wildfire and, faced with the inability to generate new paradigms, political authorities in other countries around the world are trying to imitate a system that only works in that Central American country that finds itself with constitutional guarantees suspended inside and outside prison.
According to mythology, Sisyphus, the most intelligent human being on earth, managed to deceive the gods and was punished for all eternity. Sisyphus supposedly chained Death and the gods condemned him to constantly carry a stone to the top of a mountain, which fell and forced the condemned man to descend and repeat the same action over and over again. The punishment was based on performing useless and repetitive work, without consequence or objective, devoid of hope.
Security policies in Argentina, rather than a stone that loses weight with each rise and fall, are transformed into a large ball of clay that persistently grows. The persistent desire to increase penalties, to have federal security forces patrol the streets and to involve the armed forces in the fight against complex criminal organizations because the provincial and federal security forces are short of resources, demonstrates the useless and repetitive action that the policy has taken in the face of this phenomenon.
Fortunately, and despite the context described, in some State agencies and in a large part of social organizations, proposals have emerged to make use of the assets recovered from complex criminal organizations. Cooperatives and social organizations began to use part of all these resources with the objective of increasing productivity levels and improving the economic conditions of workers, many of whom are part of the most disadvantaged sectors of society. Some State institutions have transformed them into spaces that redefine and try to recover the trust lost by society in the State.
The assets recovered from organized crime can not only be used to sustain and economically conceive different State programs that address a phenomenon as complex as organized crime. It is necessary that the practices of social organizations and certain sectors of the State be transformed into long-range public policies, coordinated and promoted by the State apparatus as a whole and that count on the indispensable and close participation of organized civil society.
The National Congress is currently considering a bill that could be the starting point for the creation of this new system - the Restored Property project - one that systematizes the use of assets recovered from organized crime and efficiently allocates them to programs aimed at Comprehensive Human Development, which is only possible if public safety is also satisfied.
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