JUSTICE TRENDS JUSTICE TRENDS Nr. 1 | June 2017 | Page 165

LATIN AMERICA / AMERICA LATINA
vulnerable groups, or to say: women with children, elderly above 70
years, LGTB, etc. So, certain groups that obviously have a special
need and whom prison could make even more vulnerable, tend to
be given certain priority. This is the government’s offer, at our Ser-
vice we have worked in a structured and constant way and we are
working with the Under–secretary and with the Department for So-
cial Readjustment. It still continues to be the judges, of course, who
decide in a concrete case if domiciliary arrest under electronic mo-
nitoring applies, even as an alternative to pre–trial detention. Being
a federal and provincial system, more and more jurisdictions consult
about the functioning of the electronic bracelets; it’s an interesting
tool which the Judicial Power is starting to see in a good light.
JT: The penitentiary system of England and Wales is a reference
for Argentina. We know that many of the ideas that have been
established in your country, and which are paradigms of the
penitentiarism, were inspired on and adapted from the English
system.
Could you please comment, and a bit more into detail, on the
foreign entities and experts that help and advise the Federal
Penitentiary Service of Argentina? Who are they and what
role do they play?
EB: In Latin America and in Argentina, the Critical Criminology
current is very ingrained, which is based on the old idea of Martinson
that “nothing works”, which has led to a very normative discussion
about the criminological tasks and about what happens in prison.
Personally, I have an empirical–based vision, maybe more
Anglo–Saxon.
The use of empiric evidence in the formulation of policies has
shown to work better than any other logic. We have taken the
current known as “What Works” as our theoretic model, whose
focus, on empiric results, allows adaptation to our reality, in many
cases starting from our own research. Another important reference
is the “Risk – Need – Responsiveness” model, of Andrews and
Bonta, from Canada. The system of inicial classification has maybe
been employed in the USA, England and Canada, or the northe