The Argentinian government has reformed the organic law of the federal police to direct the institution towards prevention and the investigation into complex crimes. But questions remain whether its new operational powers will be sufficient to face the increasingly sophisticated criminal dynamics.
The new status of the Argentine Federal Police, which redefines the role of force and could point out a change in the security policy by incorporating a national security dimension, which came into force on June 16 via the presidential decree.
According to the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, the reform only formalizes a process that began in 2016, when she directed the Ministry of National Security under the administration of former president Mauricio Macri.
See also: Why rarely succeed: Latin America’s lessons rarely succeed
One of the pillars of this reform is the creation of the Department of Federal Investigations (Departamento Federal of Investigaciones – DFI), which, according to official sources, was inspired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and will serve as a new spine of the Federal Police.
“This will lead to Argentine Federal Police in accordance with FBI standards and the main criminal investigations of governments around the world”, ” said President Javier Milei during the launch of the DFI.
The reform, which has not been passed through the Congress, includes provisions that would allow the federal police to make arrests, carry out searches and carry out cyber-surveillance operations without previous judicial mandate.
An analysis of insightful crime
Although a major reform of the Federal Police has been a matter pending since the return of democracy in 1983, the prospect of granting greater autonomy has aroused concerns about its effectiveness – especially since in other countries in the region, the strengthening of the security forces has not necessarily led to a drop in organized crime.
In recent years, several countries in Latin America – including Ecuador, Salvador and Peru – have widened the powers of the police in order to slow down violence. But in these cases, such changes have taken place under emergency And in response to particularly high levels of insecurity.
This is not the case in Argentina, where the levels of insecurity remain well below the regional average. The country has the lowest homicide in South America and a relatively limited presence of organized crime.
However, the new administration has adopted a more severe position on security, provoking criticism from opposition parties, local media and certain human rights organizations.
Martín Verrier, an anti -drug official and high -ranking organized crime, told Insight Crime that controversial arrangements – criticized for police autonomy allegedly expanding – are “less on enlarged powers and more on redirecting to crimes that have really harmed the institutional fabric of the country: corruption, trafficking, human traffic, organized ”. He added that the reform “is not the result of a punitive obsession, but of a technical assessment shared by experts: crime has become more sophisticated than the institutional response of the State.”
This growing sophistication – which has given birth to more decentralized and complex criminal structures – requires that the State, and in particular its security forces, adapt constantly. Unsurprisingly, all the experts consulted by Insight Crime have agreed to the need for a new biological law for the federal police.
See also: The corrupt federal police of Argentina: some bad apples?
However, Germán Montenegro, former military affairs secretary of the Ministry of Defense and former National Director of Security Police at Argentina Airport, told Insight that the new status did not introduce any significant change.
He said that the organizational structure of the federal police remains largely the same: too centralized, with responsibilities that overlap between the departments. And the powers under control have already been established in other legal instruments, such as the code of criminal procedure and the previous biological law of the federal police.
According to León Carlos Arslanian – a former judge of the Historical Argentina trial of military juntas, former national minister of justice and former Minister of Justice and Security for the province of Buenos Aires – The greatest defect in the new status is that it “creates a process of police empowerment because it fails correctly. In other words, the lack of institutional coordination could weaken effective monitoring of the federal police.
An additional institutional concern is the way the reform has been approved. As it has not been debated at Congress, the new status does not have political support which could strengthen its long -term legitimacy and sustainability.
In fact, a legal injunction has already been filed by opposition legislators, and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (Centro de Estudios Legals Y Sociales – CELS) filed a complaint with the Inter -American Court of Human Rights.
Federal police reform – which is part of a wider online national online security strategy – must now prove its ability to improve the state’s response to organized crime Without undermining fundamental rights. The way it is implemented, as well as the results of the legal proceedings in progress, will be essential to determine whether this legal change gains institutional legitimacy and persists over time.
Featured image: Argentinian federal police vehicle, Buenos Aires, May 2008. Credit: Polylerus.
