Bukele, Security and Democracy: The Polarization of the Criminal Justice Debate and Uruguay’s Challenge

An Approach from Criminal Law, Criminology, and Forensic Psychology

BUKELE, SECURITY AND DEMOCRACY:
THE POLARIZATION OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE DEBATE AND URUGUAY’S CHALLENGE
An Approach from Criminal Law, Criminology, and Forensic Psychology
By Dr. Martha Valfré García – Attorney and B.A. in Psychology

Second Part

6. The Victim Cannot Disappear from Criminal Law
   One of the historical errors of legal debate has been to construct certain discussions as though only two protagonists existed: the State and the accused. The victim was pushed aside. Contemporary victimology has shown the consequences of that omission.
   Recognizing the rights and safeguards of the accused is non-negotiable. But listening to the victim, preventing revictimization, and guaranteeing information, protection, and reparation are also part of a democratic criminal justice system. The social legitimacy of procedural safeguards diminishes when they are communicated as bureaucratic obstacles in the face of the suffering of those who endured the crime.
   The challenge is to prevent the legitimate recognition of the victim from becoming, in turn, an authorization to dispense with due process. The victim needs justice; the victim does not need a system that produces new injustices.
7. Prison: The Blind Spot in Uruguay’s Debate
   Uruguay will not solve its security problem merely by increasing sentences if prison continues to function as a space for the reproduction of violence and exclusion. Imprisonment temporarily incapacitates, but the vast majority of incarcerated people will return to the community. The relevant criminological question is under what conditions they will return.
   Andrews and Bonta (2010), through the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, show the importance of adjusting the intensity of intervention to risk, addressing criminogenic needs, and adapting interventions to the characteristics of the individual. Criminological evidence therefore requires moving beyond the simplistic opposition between punishment and rehabilitation. An effective reintegration policy is also a public security policy.
8. What Can Uruguay Learn Without Becoming El Salvador?
   Uruguay can draw one lesson from the Bukele phenomenon without importing his institutional model: security is an essential function of the State, and citizens will not indefinitely tolerate responses they perceive as ineffective. Ignoring that demand leaves the field open to increasingly radical solutions.
   But learning does not mean copying. Uruguay needs to strengthen criminal investigation and intelligence against criminal organizations; control weapons and illicit markets; intervene early in trajectories of violence; further professionalize risk assessment; improve the pursuit of drug-trafficking assets; transform the prison system; protect victims and witnesses; and evaluate policies through transparent indicators.
   State firmness does not require arbitrariness. It is entirely possible to build a strong State subject to the law. In fact, that should be the democratic aspiration: a State strong enough to protect the population and sufficiently limited so as not to become a source of illegitimate violence itself.
9. Polarization as a Failure of Complex Thinking
   The debate over Bukele ultimately reveals a broader psychological and political problem. Polarized societies lose their capacity to tolerate ambivalence. People are required to choose an entire side. If someone acknowledges positive results from a security policy, it is assumed that they endorse all of its institutional consequences. If they question human rights violations, it is assumed that they disregard the suffering caused by crime.
   That reasoning is intellectually poor. Democratic maturity consists precisely in sustaining propositions that generate tension: serious crime requires firm responses; punitive power needs limits; victims have rights; defendants do as well; prisons are necessary in certain cases; incarceration alone does not solve crime; social prevention is indispensable; and social prevention does not replace police investigation and criminal prosecution either.
   There is no contradiction in holding all of these propositions at once. There is complexity.
   Conclusions
   Bukele has become a symbol onto which Latin America projects its own fears, frustrations, and expectations. Reducing the phenomenon to authoritarianism prevents an understanding of why it gains support; turning it into a universal prescription prevents an understanding of the legal and institutional costs of exceptional measures.
   Uruguay must avoid both errors. The country faces a serious problem of lethal violence and complex crime, even though other crime indicators have declined. Denying this would erode public trust. But responding through an uncritical importation of exceptional models would disregard Uruguay’s institutional history and the constitutional and international obligations of the State.
   The alternative should not be framed as “Bukele or guarantism.” The real alternative is between effective criminal policies subject to the rule of law and policies that are incapable of providing security or incapable of respecting rights.
   When a democracy fails to protect, society begins to demand exceptional measures. That is why defending the rule of law does not mean asking citizens to become accustomed to fear. It means demonstrating that democracy can be firm, intelligent, and effective without abandoning its limits. The best response to punitive populism is not to minimize crime: it is to build a democratic State that works.

Doctrinal and Technical References
Andrews, D. A. and Bonta, J. (2010). The Psychology of Criminal Conduct. Anderson Publishing.
Douglas, K. S., Hart, S. D., Webster, C. D. and Belfrage, H. (2013). HCR-20V3: Assessing Risk for Violence – User Guide. Mental Health, Law, and Policy Institute, Simon Fraser University.
Ferrajoli, L. (1995). Derecho y razón. Teoría del garantismo penal. Trotta.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Zaffaroni, E. R., Alagia, A. and Slokar, A. (2002). Derecho Penal. Parte General. Ediar.
Institutional Sources Consulted
Ministry of the Interior of Uruguay, Area of Statistics and Applied Criminology (2026). Semiannual Criminal Statistics Bulletin, January–June 2026.
National Public Security Plan of Uruguay (2025). General Diagnosis of Crime and Violence in Uruguay.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2026). Statement on the effects of the state of exception in El Salvador.
Human Rights Watch (2026). World Report 2026: El Salvador.

Security and the Rule of Law
Victims, Safeguards and Prison
Polarization of the Criminal Justice Debate

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