Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article determines the potentialities of the approach to children’s rights from a human rights perspective for the formulation of international cooperation projects. Thanks to the National System for the Protection of Children in Costa Rica, in the legal sphere, there are mechanisms to facilitate the participation of this sector in the generation of that kind of proposal. In university classrooms, there is a need to work on processes of project formulation, incorporating techniques, strategies, and methodologies that allow the specialist to be closer to the population under study. The objective is to guarantee the success and commitment of the planned initiatives. In Costa Rica, there is a strong commitment to this social area despite the development of an entire National System for the Protection of Children, which still has many historical debts with the sector, particularly with groups such as early childhood and adolescence.

This article describes the experience of the First International Congress "Culture of Peace: for a dialogue between persons deprived of their liberty and the Costa Rican penal system," held on June 22nd and 23rd, 2017, at the Chorotega regional campus of the National University (UNA for its Spanish acronym). This paper describes the design, substantiation, execution, and results of the activity. The Center of General Studies of the National University and the Chorotega regional campus coordinated the congress. The meeting was attended by scholars and students from the National University, the Costa Rican Humanistic High School, and the University of Costa Rica. Also, officials from the Ministry of Justice and Peace and the Judiciary, persons deprived of liberty, persons who were deprived of liberty, and some relatives of the persons deprived of liberty attended the congress. The participants addressed the Costa Rican penitentiary phenomenon through a series of strategies that the National University had already developed and in accordance with the 2017 Declaratory of the National Council of Rectors (CONARE for its Spanish acronym) for the public universities of Costa Rica to reflect on and develop actions around life, dialogue, and peace. The paper details the methodological strategy of the event; the strategy encouraged dialogue, respect, and openness for the participation of all attendees. The working groups presented their conclusions, which were in relation to the proposal for a culture of peace in penal institutions, challenges of the Costa Rican penal system, social conditions of exclusion, more effective post-penitentiary processes, and public policies: all within the framework of the New Humanism.

El presente artículo corresponde al proyecto denominado  “Cultura de Paz y Expresiones Artísticas con personas privadas de libertad en el Centro de Atención Institucional "Calle Real" de Liberia y el Centro de Atención Semi-Institucional Nicoya 2017-2018”, el cual se ha desarrollado como parte de un esfuerzo de articulación interinstitucional entre el Centro de Estudios Generales y la Sede Regional Chorotega, ambos de la Universidad Nacional en Costa Rica. Su objetivo ha sido contribuir con el desarrollo de capacidades y habilidades para la vida de personas privadas de libertad en la Región Chorotega y, asimismo, con su proceso de reinserción y readaptación social. Se utilizaron cuatro técnicas, talleres, charlas, ludo pedagogía y actividades artísticas, que fueron un medio para el abordaje integral de los conceptos, como por ejemplo la vivencia de una cultura paz, convivencia pacífica y su vinculación con el arte. Con ello, se obtuvieron resultados importantes como la reflexión y la concientización de las situaciones cotidianas, la socialización y construcciones sociales. Gracias a esta experiencia de aprendizaje, se ha logrado desarrollar una dimensión emocional,  motivacional y cognitiva de las personas participantes, mediante la generación de espacios humanizados, creados mediante actividades lúdicas, artísticas (actividad corporal a partir del teatro y la danza, entre otras).  Como resultado de estas dinámicas y expresiones se llevó a cabo un Taller de Danza con el cual, mediante una secuela de ensayos y ejercicios basados en la danza contemporánea construimos una coreografía "Cuerpos al descubierto", a partir de su percepción de vida. Se efectuaron también jornadas de reflexión, que se convirtieron en espacios de encuentro y reflexión, sobre los objetivos, metodología y donde nos replanteamos sobre el concepto de las personas privadas de libertad para contribuir al mejoramiento de las condiciones que pertenecen a este sistema.

This article aims to present the Interdisciplinary Project in Prison and without Humanity (PPH), an initiative oriented to contribute to the social self-emancipation, not so much from the "scourges" of crime and imprisonment, but from the root causes -and circumstantial ones as well- that have catapulted these two phenomena to be so prominent in our Latin American societies of today. The article seeks to describe a set of interactions between structural-systemic factors, specific elements of political, economic and cultural order, and the awareness of social subjects who live immersed in the phenomena that make up the system of criminality and the prison universe in the Latin America region of the 21st century. The project derived from the application of theoretical and methodological developments of the work of the Rolando García Chair of Humanism, Complexity, and Interdiscipline (CRG) (2015-2017) and the Ibn Khaldun Chair of New Humanism, Hypercomplexity, and Intergnosis (CIJ) (2018-2021). Its purpose was the construction of an interdisciplinary/intergnosis research process on the evolution of the phenomena of criminality and prison universe in the country and throughout the Latin American region. These phenomena occupy a central place in the most severe problems that afflict Costa Rica and Latin America in general, at present.

According to several studies, the majority of women offenders live in particular conditions of vulnerability - such as poverty, violence, or dependency - that can explain the violation of the legal system. These factors have historically been ignored by justice systems, which poses a high risk of further exclusion and marginalization. In early 2019, Costa Rica approved a legal reform to incorporate a gender perspective in the punishment of women in conflict with the criminal law. This reform will allow judges to reduce the amount of the sentence when there has been a condition of vulnerability. Through a bibliographic and legislative review, this article seeks to value the normative change and explain its scope.  It also presents an analysis of the feminine profile of criminality and poses some challenges to the penitentiary system in the care of women, especially those imprisoned.  

This article aims to determine the effectiveness of the constitutional reform in the field of human rights in Mexico, whose central axis is the presumption of innocence. The reform is a mechanism that would enable the reduction of the prison population. Taking into consideration the previous modifications to the criminal justice model and the country's option for the accusatory system, the need to opt for support for due process guarantees became an encouraging decision in a national context where the violation of human rights, and especially those of persons deprived of liberty, continues to be an issue still to be resolved. Also, the present paper applied the methodology of analysis of the figures for persons in pre-trial detention in the states of the Mexican Republic and Mexico City; the objective of the study was to know, in an accurate manner, whether or not the number of persons in prison increased as expected. Therefore, the necessary consideration of the public security problem that has been going on for more than a decade is brought to the discussion, which is an issue that has not been resolved and, although in some areas it was reduced, in others it has been revived. It is urgent for the Mexican State to address the prison problem through decent wages, the treatment of addictions, and the attention to the lack of opportunities, among many other issues.

This article aims to analyze the context where the criminal system occurs, which enables the application of certain regulations. It also analyzes the moral and cultural notions of the implementation of these regulations, as well as the commission of a crime, specifically concerning women in jail. It is based on the author's direct experience as an anthropologist and feminist in Costa Rica's prisons, mainly working with women deprived of their liberty for almost ten years. This paper tries to look at the social place that women have occupied and how this is reflected when they arrive in prison, how they can be looked at and treated and how their crimes, their punishments, and their claims are the product, in one way or another, of inequality and social injustice reflected in criminal injustice. There is a discussion about different experiences in the penal system in Costa Rica, and serious problems are formulated that reinforce social inequality, such as sexism and lack of a gender approach. In conclusion, women in prison are not different from other socially oppressed women in the country. Their voices, their needs, and their sorrows belong to the same order as those that, day by day, try to devise ways to belong, socially, economically and politically, to a country that has denied them opportunities. It is proposed as an obligation to retake their voices to contribute to social equity.

This article aims to analyze the last five years of the Costa Rican Penitentiary System, to show in which state it is and what the public policy proposals have been to address the problem of incarceration of persons and the problems derived from this activity.  A theoretical and methodological review is carried out to account for prison overpopulation and the prison as a reforming institution. The discussion is considered important when visualizing the role of the prison system, which has been instrumentalized as a social mechanism and given a justification that allows it to be considered as a solution to the country's delinquency problem. Prison has been given the role of the resocializing entity and the "right" place for people considered as criminals to serve their prison penalties. However, the advent of penal and citizen security reforms from the early twenty-first century led to an increase in the population deprived of liberty and the emergence of two phenomena: overpopulation and overcrowding. This has caused both elements to violate the rights of people imprisoned. Therefore, a proposal is presented to reduce the effects of the use of prison and thereby improve the quality of life of people in incarcerated, based on a different institutional and criminal policy.