As happened in 2019, the state of public security once again occupies the center of Uruguay’s electoral campaign, which will hold its primaries on June 30 to define who will compete for the presidency in October. As then, attention is focused on homicides, which escalated after the pandemic and reached 382 in 2023, a figure that is difficult to digest for a country of just 3.4 million inhabitants that generally exhibits high levels of human development. With a rate of 11.2 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the situation in Uruguay is not among the most critical in Latin America, but it doubles the world average and is far from the rate recorded for example in Chile – 4.5 per 100,000 – with which it is often compared. Public safety appears as the main concern for 49% of Uruguayans, as recently revealed by the consulting firm Factum.
“The World Health Organization establishes the threshold of 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants as a rate above which the phenomenon is epidemic. In Uruguay we are already above that, which implies the risk that the situation gets out of control and we have a negative evolution,” Emiliano Rojido, sociologist and researcher on violence, crime and public policies, tells EL PAIS. The situation is not new: a study based on official data of which Rojido is co-author, points out that Uruguay’s rate increased by 37% between 2012 and 2022, going from 7.8 to 10.7 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, with significant oscillations in that interval. The peak occurred in 2018 with 421 crimes, in 2021 ―pandemic through― they dropped to 306, but rose to 383 in 2022 and the following year one less was recorded.
He in crescendo of all crimes – homicides, thefts, robberies – registered since 2012 paradoxically coincides with the rebound that the Uruguayan economy experienced during the governments of the leftist Frente Amplio (FA), according to analysis by political scientist Diego Sanjurjo, current coordinator of Comprehensive and preventive security strategies of the Ministry of the Interior. “When the economy improves, poverty decreases and wealth increases, all markets grow, including illegal ones. That happened throughout Latin America,” the specialist tells EL PAIS. Among others, the illegal drug market and drug trafficking grew, with what this can lead to in terms of violence. “In countries like Germany, France, Spain, which grew much more than Latin Americans, they had the intelligence and capacity to implement a number of policies that made marginality decrease,” he explains.
Montevideo concentrated 55% of the homicides recorded in 2023: 210 of a total of 382, which occurred mainly in the poorest neighborhoods in the northeast of the capital; most of the victims were between 18 and 37 years old. And according to the official classification, the “settling of scores” and the “conflict between criminals” motivated 50% of those deaths. “The growth of homicidal violence has been closely associated with the dynamics of the increase in illegal markets, particularly that of drugs, although not only,” maintains Rafael Paternain, sociologist and former director of the Violence and Crime Observatory during the first FA government (2005-2010). “Violence in Uruguay has become very territorial,” continues the expert, “it has had a kind of maturation and enclave in specific places, generally urban spaces of high socioeconomic precariousness, but it has also expanded to other areas of the country.”
In the midst of the electoral campaign, the ruling center-right coalition highlights that during this administration, complaints of theft, theft and cattle rustling decreased significantly compared to 2019. They decreased by 27%, 19% and 50%, respectively, according to the data released. “We have not been able to deal with the homicides,” recently recognized the Uruguayan president, Luis Lacalle Pou, who took office in 2020 with the commitment to reverse this scourge that especially hits young people in an aging population like Uruguay. For Sanjurjo, current advisor to the Government, the country needs its security policies to modernize, address crime as a multi-causal phenomenon and provide responses in an inter-institutional manner. “That’s in its infancy,” he says.
In the last two decades, the prison population has tripled in Uruguay: it went from 5,000 inmates to almost 15,000. The country has the highest incarceration rate in South America and ranks 12th in the world. Recidivism, meanwhile, reaches 70%. To combat crime, the current government maintained roughly the formula promoted by left-wing governments: police control, increased penalties and imprisonment, whose results – with regard to homicides – are visible. “It’s exactly the same, but in a worse version,” says Paternain, for whom in this period there was a setback in attempts to modernize the police. He agrees with Sanjurjo that “thinking preventively” should be at the center of the agenda: “A security policy is a policy of social integration to reduce inequalities, with a very strong preventive component.”
Homicide is a complex phenomenon that can be prevented, insists sociologist Rojido, co-author of the report Typology of homicides in Uruguay. In that sense, it emphasizes the difference: it is not the same to prevent a case that may occur within the couple, another that may occur as an outcome of an armed robbery on a public street, one caused by the conflict between criminal groups or others that arise due to disputes between neighbors. “Each one requires specific approaches and public policies for its reduction. But we are far from that happening,” he remarks. On the other hand, he highlights that in Uruguay the quality of the data that refers to the number of homicides is good, but the classification system is not. “It is problematic in many ways,” according to the research they presented this year.
“One of the consequences [de esa clasificación problemática] is that it tended to overestimate the impact of organized crime on lethal violence,” details the expert. Rojido maintains that in Uruguay a narrative was established “reinforced by the media” and by the “sometimes opportunistic discourse of politicians”, that most of the increase in lethal violence “would be due to the conflict between linked criminal groups.” to drug trafficking.” However, the detailed reclassification study of which he was a part showed that intergroup homicides, linked to organized crime, did not exceed 2% of all those that occurred in 2019, “very far from the 50% that was said by the politicians,” he points out. Currently, the Ministry of the Interior is carrying out a review of the classification categories, according to Rojido, considered key to prevention work.
In this area, the Interior has begun to apply a comprehensive and preventive security strategy, with 15 proposals that include the “Neighborhoods without violence” program, aimed at the prevention of homicides, and also provides for the implementation of “annual victimization surveys”, which will allow us to know the occurrence of unreported crimes. “Whoever wins, in the first year of Government the foundations of a criminal policy that we do not have would have to be laid and a working group based on scientific evidence and with social participation would have to be created,” concludes Rojido.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América in Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
#Uruguay #crashes #security #recipes #fails #reduce #homicides