Costa Rican lawmakers have advanced a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the extradition of Costa Rican drug traffickers and terrorists wanted by foreign authorities, highlighting growing concern that organized crime is corrupting the judiciary’s ability to confront it.
The bill, introduced last year, is headed to the full legislative assembly for a vote after getting approval on July 8 from a special legislative commission. If the next vote is successful, it will face court review and additional steps before it becomes law.
The proposed constitutional change has the backing of President Rodrigo Chaves and his allies in congress. Security Minister Mario Zamora called its progress an “important step” in the fight against crime.
“We must not stop here,” Zamora said in a press conference. “The country should also analyze at a second level the possibility of extending extradition to other crimes.”
The proposal’s advancement comes as Costa Rica faces a rise in cases of state corruption, feeding doubts about the integrity of its judicial system.
The number of corruption cases more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, rising from 106 to 273, according to Randall Zúñiga López, director general of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department (Organismo de Investigación Judicial – OIJ).
The trend shows no sign of abating in 2024. In June, police apprehended 20 state employees in a single week, over half of whom worked in the country’s court system.
InSight Crime Analysis
Support for the proposed constitutional change and other new security measures has grown in recent years, as homicides have skyrocketed due to drug trafficking gangs clashing over territory. And experts say the lack of resources directed toward the judiciary has fueled corruption and undermined the system’s ability to respond to organized crime.
Budget cuts have slashed the number of personnel in the judiciary, hampering investigations and bogging down the system. The budget assigned to the judiciary in 2024 is the lowest in real dollar terms in the last 20 years, resulting in a salary freeze and staffing cuts.
Starting in 2019, Costa Rica invested in specialized investigators to tackle corruption. But last year, the country had only 127 prosecutors and 455 assistant prosecutors to handle more than 200,000 new cases filed, according to Attorney General Carlo Díaz Sánchez. This has led to a massive backlog, with close to a third of all pending cases being over two years old.
The sluggishness of the system has at times gotten suspects off the hook. On June 25, a court ended three years of pretrial detention and other precautionary measures against 10 suspects in a drug trafficking case, citing the slow progress of the prosecution’s investigation.
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As organized crime groups become increasingly well-armed and well-funded, it is easier for them to corrupt officials using threats or bribery.
Violence is escalating, and gangs are often better armed than police. Some public servants may feel they have no choice but to aid criminals.
It is possible that many people who work in justice give in to corruption out of fear, Karen Jiménez Morales, director of Police Sciences at the State University of Distance Education, told InSight Crime.
Moreover, stagnant wages for public officials also make it easier for cash-flushed criminals to entice government workers.
Recruiting talented people who want to do good is not hard, according to Zúñiga López, but low wages mean many workers are leaving public service for better opportunities in the private sector, while others turn to crime.
“Within five years or four years, we’re not going to have any people here with the skills or all the training that we had, and all the experience that we need,” he said.
Featured image: The Costa Rican Supreme Court building. Credit: Tico Times