Resumo

BEDOYA URENA, Jesús. Reformas punitivas en la Costa Rica de fin de siglo: novedad o inercia del pasado. Delito soc. [online]. 2022, vol.31, n.54, pp.6-9. ISSN 0328-0101.  http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.14409/dys.2022.54.e0070.

Costa Rica have been recognized like an exceptional country in the Centro American region, especially for the early decision to abolish the army, for its democratic institutions, and the leading of the human rights legislation on the region. However, these recognitions do not be reflected in other arenas like the punitive legislation and the prisons. Since the 1990 decade, the prison population rate in Costa Rica begun to arise until become in nowadays in one of the top-twenty countries in the world with highest incarceration rate. In this paper I analyze this problem by a documental research strategy of the records of four legislative reforms which had have more impact in the increase of Costa Rica’s penal population. By attendance these debates, the decisions of the legislators, and their preference of more length and severity punitive solutions, I found a no-resolved tension between the impetus for something new, the disbelief on the jail like a social control strategy, and the impossibility to think in alternative ways. In this sense, the novelty which the legislators were seeking for, become in a «inertia of the past», where the innovation has turned in a coming back of the well-known intransigent and severe penality model.

Palavras-chave : sociology of punishment; punitive legislation; penitentiary policy; prisons; Costa Rica.

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