Carlos Alvarado, president-elect of Costa Rica 2018-2020. Source: Wikicommons. All rights reserved.
Carlos Alvarado Quesada of the center-left Citizens’
Action Party (Partido Acción Ciudadana – PAC) was elected as Costa Rica’s next president on April 1, beating out conservative
candidate Fabricio Alvarado Muñoz with just over 60 percent of the vote.
Despite the fact that Costa Rica saw its most homicidal
year on record
in 2017, rising insecurity took a back seat to other issues during the
campaign.
Candidates focused more on social and economic matters, including the
rights of LGBT people, the country’s national debt and a wide-ranging
corruption case involving Costa Rica’s cement sector.
InSight Crime Analysis
Despite clear signs of rising insecurity in Costa Ricarelated to the country’s growing role in the international drug trade, President-elect
Alvarado has failed to put forth a clear plan for turning back the tide of
increasing violence and criminality.
Officials in Costa Rica are well aware that organized crime-related
violence is on the rise.
An estimated 25 percent of homicides in 2017 were linked to the drug trade, according to authorities.
According to a September 2017 government report,
organized crime is “driving the rise” in homicides in the country. An estimated 25 percent of homicides in 2017 were linked to the drug trade, according
to authorities.
But despite this recognition, President-elect
Alvarado’s rhetoric on security policy thus far has been vague and inconsistent.
Indeed, Alvarado has proposed enhancing the
infrastructure and training of the national police and strengthening citizen
security programs as part of preventative efforts designed to combat crime.
Improved police
training is essential in light of a questionable
move by the
government last year to reduce training requirements in order to rapidly put
more cops on the street. But Alvarado’s proposal lacks any specifics
regarding what these improvements might look like and how they will address
some of the root causes driving violence in Costa Rica.
The president-elect has addressed the access to firearms as one root cause of rising violence
Alvarado’s proposals for attacking organized crime also lack clarity. The president-elect has addressed
one root cause of rising violence — access to firearms — by calling for
stricter gun control and establishing a gun registry to better trace weapons.
But Latin America is awash with
illegal guns used by
criminal groups, and it’s unlikely that a registry alone can get them out of
the hands of criminals.
Alvarado has also proposed an asset forfeiture
law in Costa Rica, a controversial tool used by authorities throughout the region to go
after the finances of criminal groups. However, little evidence suggests that
such a policy would do much to roll back deepening insecurity, particularly in
the short term.
Moreover, Alvarado’s Citizens’ Action Party doesn’t even
have specific
sections on crime and security outlined in their platform. It remains to be
seen whether the new government will outline more concrete policy proposals
regarding insecurity in Costa Rica, which has already set a new record for homicides throughout the first three months of 2018.
This article was previously published by Insight Crime. You can read the original here
