The government of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele proposed this Thursday a reform to punish minors who have committed murder or rape with life imprisonmentwhether or not they belong to the gangs, which will be submitted for approval by Congress, dominated by the ruling party.
The proposal expands the scope of the constitutional reform that was approved on Tuesday by the Legislative Assembly, at the request of Bukele, which imposed life imprisonment on the “murderers, rapists and terrorists.”
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“We are proposing to bring this judgment to life sentences even in the case of minors” that commit these crimes, said the Minister of Security, Gustavo Villatoro, when presenting the initiative before a legislative commission.
The minor who voluntarily joins a criminal organization or that “who rapes or kills” has to “have a different treatment” that of those who commit less serious crimes, he stressed.
The minister justified the need for this measure because, as he said, the juvenile criminal law always guaranteed “cheap, unpunished and recyclable human resources to criminal organizations.”
Before the same commission, the Minister of Defense, Francis Merino, stated that many of the gang homicides were “a product of the permissibility of the laws that must be reformed.”
Until now the maximum sentence was 60 years and life sentence was expressly prohibited in the Constitution.
The amendment must be ratified by Congress, while the rule that includes minors must be submitted for legislative approval in the coming days.
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