House Arrest and the Culture of the Colombian Underworld

Commit a crime here in Colombia, and you might just get the chance to relish all the comforts of home while serving out your sentences... no matter how heinous the transgression. If you are like a disturbingly high number of convicted offenders, you might just be at home. Colombia has granted almost 20,000 convicts the privilege of house arrest in lieu of time behind bars... and probably not out of altruism. Of those, about half (9,414) are "high risk" offenders.

What defines "high risk?" According to INPEC (Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario, the Colombian corrections department), the breakdown of dangerous offenders with house arrest is:

• Drug trafficking: 6,945
• Homicide: 916
• Conspiracy: 836
• Kidnapping: 138
• Sexual abuse of a minor: 380
• Rape of a minor: 193
• Terrorism: 6

And, of course, it's important to remember that when Colombians talk "drug trafficking," they don't mean some aging hippy with a hydroponics setup or some college kid making beer money for the weekend by selling his Adderall. Ethical discussions about personal consumption of drugs aside, I think we can all safely agree that these are Bad Men.

Coming as a great shock to no one, about two-thirds of the convicts ("prisoners" is hardly a fitting word under the circumstances) who enjoy house arrest really enjoy it, violating the terms with impunity. While electronic monitoring techniques such as ankle bracelets have proved a boon, the benefit seems only to be knowing when someone is going out for a coke-fueled night on the town. "Deterrence" is a pipe dream.

To most, the idea of giving house arrest in place of jail time for violent offenders who pose a clear and present danger to their communities, to the credibility and effectiveness of the judicial process and the fabric of Colombian society is folly at best and completely insane at worst. (That said, Pablo Escobar was allowed to build his own prison, so at least it's consistent insanity.)

There are definite precedents and valid reasons for the use of house arrest in the case of relatively harmless crimes, and various countries have employed it to varying degrees of effectiveness. Scandinavian countries are widely recognized for their innovative penal systems, emphasizing rehabilitation and socialization over punishment. Perhaps offering provisional house arrest to Finnish killers or Norwegian small-time drug-runners would yield the same groundbreaking results.

The problem, though, is that Colombia is not Finland. It's a safe bet that Dimebag Sven the pot dealer does not have the backing of cartels with near-global reach (who, a cynic might suggest, have enough pull in the right circles to get their cohorts off with the penal equivalent of a time-out and a stern warning).

The culture of Colombia's criminal element, and the dominance of criminal organizations, doesn't permit such non-punishments. While it's true that criminal organizations, and their chains of command and communication, exist on both sides of the prison wall, relying on the honor system shows either A.) a jaw-dropping level of corruption that undermines the country's attempts to shake off the "narcostate" label, or B.) a degree of optimistic naivete that shows only a nodding acquaintance with reality. If a state wants to punish criminals and dismantle the structures that give them power, it has to ensure that they don't have access to those structures, or at least limit it as much as possible.

Send lawyers, guns and money,
J.