Former Buenos Aires police chief Salvador Baratta stated that '70% of minors end up dead'. He questioned, 'A child of 4 or 5 years old, with his brothers, cousins, father in prison, and a mother who sells cocaine, do we keep leaving them there? The State takes great care of the minor's human rights, but it leaves them on the street for them to get into another shootout with the police.' Baratta added, 'The law is great for minors who are already criminals. What worries me is the wave of kids aged 7, 8, 9, 10, whom the State sees are in danger, sees they live in a family environment that cannot contain them, and yet it abandons them. As a law-abiding citizen, I pay my taxes, I pay everything so that the State can give these kids education, give them health, and give us security. The State should take care of this.' He stated, 'I fulfill my function as a citizen. This is like combat in a war, we kill the enemy and that's it. And what about those who come after? What worries me is not imprisoning minors under 14, 12, 13, whatever age they want to set for criminal capacity.' Buenos Aires, Feb 13 (NA) – Former Buenos Aires police chief Salvador Baratta asserted that '70% of minors end up dead' while adding that 'the law is great for minors who are already criminals.' Amid the debate in the National Congress on lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 14, the commissioner stated that 'in the institutes we have today, no one will be rehabilitated from crime. We come from two generations of kids who used to steal, who went to visit their parents in prison. What do we expect to come out of that?' 'In 90% of cases of a crooked father, the one or two-year-old child who visits him in prison every week, grows up to be a crook. What interests me are those who are entering the criminal system, and here nobody gives a damn about that. Here we have to accompany this law with a much stricter law, so that the minor who is in danger in the family nucleus is taken out of that family, is placed in a foster family, because otherwise this is an army of ants,' he added in statements to Radio Rivadavia, to which the Argentine News Agency had access. Continuing his analysis, Baratta affirmed, 'now we are going to imprison the 14-year-olds, but behind them come the 9-year-olds, the 8-year-olds, the 7-year-olds. The one coming head-on, fine, he goes to prison. I'll debate that with any legislator who wants to. Let's take the minors, they have no prior records—which is another joke in this country—but let's take the minors with a criminal record and see how many of them have criminal parents and mothers.' Likewise, the commissioner questioned the premise that 'the delinquent is a product of society': 'Why do we make all of society responsible for these kids being products of society? Excuse me, I don't feel responsible.'
