How should Latin America address the issue of over 30,000 incarcerated children?

On June 7, a 14-year-old boy shot Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a presidential candidate.

Although the teenager pulled the trigger, little is known about who gave the order. The assassination attempt left Colombia, a country accustomed to violence, on edge, with the population demanding severe consequences for the assailant. Some have even called for a life sentence or the death penalty. The Colombian right has pushed for changes in the law to treat juvenile hitmen as adults.

When Irvin Mendoza Rodríguez heard the news in Chihuahua, Mexico, it felt like he was seeing himself at that age: a boy trained to kill. “It’s easy to convince a kid to do something like this; you just need to find a young man from a dysfunctional and impoverished family and dazzle him with money,” he explains to EL PAÍS over a video call. “Many of us get into this to give our families a good life or to gain recognition,” he adds.

Mendoza Rodríguez is now 32 years old. He has a daughter, a stable job at Walmart in Chihuahua, and a good relationship with the prosecutor who once sought to apply the full force of the law against him when he was still a teenager.

At the age of 16, he had killed 11 people, was part of a carjacking gang, and faced his first trial. He spent seven years in prison, divided between a juvenile center and an adult prison, until 2017, when he benefited from the National Law of the Comprehensive Criminal Justice System for Adolescents, which prevents minors from being held for more than five years.

During his time as a prisoner, Mendoza Rodríguez lost a kidney, an eye, and mobility in one leg due to violence in the penitentiary and the juvenile center. “At first, I thought I was a bad person, but not everyone could be bad. In my community, there were many children like me,” he sighs.

Latin America has the second-highest number of children in detention in the world, after North America (due to the United States). At least 34,000 boys and girls were detained across Latin America in 2024, which is one in eight of those incarcerated worldwide.

The vast majority of these children are accused of minor offenses, such as robbery and theft, according to a UNICEF report published in early June. Kendra Gregson, a child protection advisor for the organization in Latin America and the Caribbean, warns of the correlation between detentions and the subsequent deterioration in mental and physical health of these young people. “Children miss important developmental milestones and are therefore at a disadvantage regarding long-term opportunities for education and decent work,” the official explains. She suggests alternatives to detention that are closer to restorative justice, such as reparations, apologizing to victims, community service, or probation.

Like her, three other experts consulted by EL PAÍS agree that prison is not a suitable place for children and that, far from preventing future violence, it perpetuates it. Corina Giacomello, a professor and researcher at the Legal Research Institute at the Autonomous University of Chiapas, celebrates Mexican legislation as a giant step forward in a country accustomed to drug traffickers exploiting children.

“In Mexico, even though the narrative isn’t super progressive, we’ve managed to see these children as victims of organized crime, not as perpetrators,” she notes. However, both Giacomello and Mendoza Rodríguez detail numerous shortcomings and deficiencies in Mexican juvenile centers. “Even with a specialized regime, we have to reconsider whether [incarcerated children] truly align with the system’s principles of reintegration and support.”

“I did what I saw”

Irvin doesn’t excuse his actions. He now understands the damage he caused. He realized this more deeply when his pregnant partner died in an accident while he was in prison. “When I went through the grieving process, I understood the damage I had done — and the damage that other children continue to do — because of the mafias,” he reflects.

“I did what I saw my uncles and cousins doing; they were considered the coolest because they stole and killed. They were well-known in the community,” he recalls. Since changing his life, he explains that he has periodically returned to his old neighborhood to show the kids the other side of being “the coolest.”

“I tell them that, yes, they could get easy money, women, and respect… but they would end up like me. Or worse: dead. I explain that none of them are El Chapo Guzmán.”

Salvadoran psychologist Jeannette Aguilar laments that cases like Irvin’s are all too common in the region. She emphasizes that the punitive discourse should not focus solely on one individual. “It’s important to recognize that this isn’t about black and white or good and bad. There’s clear individual and state responsibility. The state fails the victims by not protecting them, and it fails children like Irvin by not providing an alternative to the vulnerability and stigmatization of communities like his. This exclusion forces them to join criminal gangs,” she explains. “These children are also victims of violence.”

El Salvador is one of the countries in the region that has intensified the persecution and detention of individuals, including minors. In the three-year-long state of emergency, Salvadoran authorities have imprisoned over 84,000 people, 70% of whom are between 12 and 35 years old. At least 3,300 of them are minors. The latest amendments to criminal law allow minors aged 12 and over to be tried as adults and sentenced to prison — alongside those over 18 — for gang-related offenses. “This is a country that incarcerates its children and youth,” Aguilar criticizes.

A month ago, given the growing perception of insecurity in Peru, public outcry led to the passage of a law that lowered the age of criminal responsibility for major crimes from 18 to 16. This means that any adolescent over 16 will be treated as an adult in certain cases, such as contract killings.

For Beatriz Ramírez Huaroto, a Peruvian lawyer, “the current prison regime gives the state the opportunity to work with them. Since they’re still adolescents and their patterns or behaviors aren’t yet established, these can be changed,” she points out. “We must ask ourselves if punishment alone is the solution to violence.”

Peruvian law stipulates that detained juveniles must be kept in separate wards from adults. This is also true for legislation governing other prisons in the region, such as those in El Salvador. However, overcrowding in these prisons means that such clauses are not enforced.

Gregson, the child protection advisor at UNICEF, insists that “there’s no correlation between lowering the age [of criminal responsibility] and a decline in homicide rates.” Therefore, she explains, not only is it an ineffective measure, but it also risks increasing the number of children detained alongside adults, who are often criminals.

Across Latin America, UNICEF estimates indicate that the number of minors deprived of their liberty has declined in recent years, from 46,000 in 2018 to 34,000 in 2024, making it one of the regions with the largest reported decrease.

Aguilar delves into how adolescence is a critical life stage, where personality and identity are formed. “It’s a time of self-construction; they’re reaffirming their place in the world. The stigmatization of their communities or neighborhoods freezes this process and creates a negative identity and self-image,” she notes. If, during this formative phase, the role models aren’t teachers, parents, or friends, but rather criminals, these children end up accepting that they belong to dangerous groups.

“In El Salvador, gangs thrive on incarcerated adolescents and young people, who are often jailed for minor offenses. They’re recruited right there in prison. Sometimes, it’s a path of no return,” she concludes.

Irvin’s case is the exception to the rule. As he tells EL PAÍS in a video call, if he managed to radically change his life, it was despite prison — not because of it. “Of those who were [jailed] with me, practically 97% are still in prison or dead,” he concludes.

He also laments that, during his reintegration process, he experienced the absence of the state. “No psychologist or psychiatrist wanted to see me. I frightened them,” he explains. Subsequently, he began to control his anger to avoid being violent toward others. He did this in the best way he knew how: first by harming animals, then by self-harming.

For months now, Irvin has been in therapy. His only wish is to be able to be a responsible father one day.

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