In Argentina, Governor Axel Kicillof has launched a multi-agency program for the prevention of crime among children, adolescents, and young people in conflict with the law. Pursuant to this policy, when a minor is apprehended for the alleged commission of a crime, regardless of the age of criminal responsibility, a risk matrix is determined. This data is forwarded to the Local Childhood Services so that they can coordinate the corresponding intervention with judges and prosecutors for minors. Argentina, which sets the age of criminal responsibility at 16, has a homicide rate of 4.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, the lowest in all of Latin America. Contrary to the opinions of experts in juvenile matters and international instruments on childhood, former Minister of Security Patricia Bulrich stated that “a crime of an adult deserves an adult's penalty.” I wonder: what was the minister doing between the ages of 14 and 16? What emotional maturity could Patricia Bulrich have had if, according to various interviews she gave to Mrs. Mirtha Legrand on her show on April 9, 2017, and to journalist Nancy Pazos on her show “Inteligencia Artesanal,” re-aired on Friday, December 12, 2025, she fervently embraced the cause of political activism? In the last five years, homicides committed by non-culpable minors have not only not increased but have decreased significantly. According to statistical data provided by the Superintendence of Criminal Analysis of the province of Buenos Aires, intentional homicides committed by non-culpable minors have decreased by 20.8% in the last year. The purpose of the program is to interrupt the minor's criminal trajectory and prevent future tragedies. Strengthening zonal services for the comprehensive protection of the rights of children and adolescents as a tool to continue reducing crimes committed by minors is the path that the 24 jurisdictions that make up our country must develop, and there is no need to lower the age of criminal responsibility to reduce the recidivism of crimes committed by minors, whether they are culpable or not. For this reason, Unión por la Patria will propose a bill that sanctions a new Juvenile Penal Regime that focuses on compliance with the special treatment and Comprehensive Protection of minors, in accordance with the National Constitution and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. Patricia Bulrich is the best example that you cannot punish a 14-year-old person. It is the unanimous conclusion of experts that there can never be an equivalence in the reproach between a conduct carried out by a child or adolescent, and a similar conduct carried out by an adult, a point that, if not respected, would violate one of the cardinal principles that operate in criminal law, such as the principle of culpability. On this principle, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation in the “Maldonado” case, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the “Mendoza” case, held that due to the lesser degree of autonomy of adolescent persons compared to adult persons, the punitive reproach must be lesser to respect the constitutional principle of culpability. So that there are no doubts, in the aforementioned Maldonado case, the highest court of our country was forceful in the differentiation between the responsibility of a minor and that of an adult: “It corresponds to an unquestionable ontological datum that they do not have the same degree of emotional maturity that must be presumed and demanded in adults, which is verifiable in the common and ordinary experience of family and school life, where the actions of children that in adults would be frankly pathological are corrected. This unquestioned emotional immaturity imposes, without a doubt, that the criminal reproach of culpability formulated against the child cannot have the same entity as that normally formulated against an adult. From this point of view, the culpability for the act of the child is of lesser entity than that of the adult, as a consequence of his immature personality in the emotional sphere” (Maldonado ruling, paragraph 37). Julio Conte Grand, Buenos Aires prosecutor. (Photo: Archive NA) (Photo: Archive NA) Regarding the level of maturation of children, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body that applies the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has constitutional rank in Argentina, stated: “The evidence obtained in the fields of development and neuroscience indicates that the brains of young people continue to mature beyond adolescence, which affects certain types of decision-making.” Unlike the stance held by Bulrich, Dr. Julio Conte Grand, current Attorney General of the province of Buenos Aires, stated: “Young people accused of crimes require a different social response because they are beings in evolution, therefore, all measures adopted must have as their fundamental objective their re-education and the prevention of future recidivism, with parallel attention to the victims and their families.” Finally, the urgency in lowering the age of criminal responsibility is also not explained. Currently, minors between the ages of 16 and 18 are criminally responsible, and the government intends to lower the age to 14. While the media discussion was centered on the devastation caused by the fires in Patagonia and state indifference, added to the negative impact of economic policy on the industry and small and medium-sized enterprises, the Government uses the hackneyed punitive demagoguery to divert attention and try to empathize with sectors of society that were victims or are genuinely convinced that lowering the age is an effective response to solve insecurity problems. As I have been maintaining to oppose this reform, the governmental and communicational policy of the officialism is oriented to create the sociologically called “monster child”: the stigmatization of minors by adults who deposit there the collective fears and frustrations. But the statistical data reflect that countries like Brazil, which lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 12, have a homicide index of 23.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, and Uruguay, which maintains the age of criminal responsibility at 18, is one of the safest countries in the world. Patricia Bulrich. In 2014, they sought for those over 16 to be criminally responsible as adults for serious crimes but the popular consultation failed. An encouraging fact is that the decrease in homicides committed by non-culpable minors coincides with the entry into force of the program “Entramados.” Buenos Aires, Feb 7 (NA) – The government of Javier Milei insists again on sanctioning a juvenile penal regime that establishes the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility with the purpose of dominating the public agenda.
