Think tank says to fight crime security policies must be revamped

Santo Domingo.- Institutionalism and Justice Foundation(Finjus) executive vice president Servio Tulio Castaños, on Wednesday saidDominican authorities should sit at a table to discuss the issue of securitywith an integral view to redesign anticrime policies.

He said Finjus has been working on the issue and questionedthe institutions, which he affirms that instead of responding to the topic on safety,proceed individually instead.

"These conflicts that exist between the police and theJustice Ministry or between the Justice Ministry and the Supreme Court and thelack of public information about public security policies being implemented bythe government, I think has been a mistake," Castaños said.

He also noted that crimes won’t be solved by passingisolated topics or passing laws such as police reform or the property forfeiturelaw because although they are tools that will eventually help improve security,aren’t as strong as designing integral public policies.

"For example, if we consider that for every 100muggings reported, 80 were committed with motorcycles and where more than halfof the motorcycles have no documents, then clearly there’s a problem thatinfers that the State is encouraging or is attacking security."

He said progress must be made with a summit or a tablewhere actors of Dominican society converge, because the security problem mustbe addressed collectively.

"Studies have proposed the emergence of initiatives tofight crime individually, but this hasn’t led to a successful solution of thephenomena at its root, and maintain society on alert."