Juvenile Justice in Paraguay: Challenges in Specialization, Deprivation of Liberty, and Social Reintegration

Abstract

The study analyzes the situation of juvenile criminal justice in Paraguay, focusing on the gap between a legal framework of integral protection and institutional practices. The general objective was to examine the main challenges and limitations of the Paraguayan juvenile justice system and to assess its alignment with the principles established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Methodologically, the research was developed as an interpretive qualitative documentary analysis, based on the systematic analytical reading of a corpus of nine normative, jurisprudential, institutional, journalistic and doctrinal documents, organized into categories derived from the objectives, and complemented by secondary description of official statistical records. The findings show that the adolescent population deprived of liberty fell from 367 in 2014 to 160 in 2023, and that the length of confinement decreased from an average of six months to one year down to a range of three to five months; however, eight out of ten detained adolescents are held in pretrial detention; 90% of transfers between educational centers were punitive in nature; 299 adolescents were transferred to adult prisons, mainly upon turning eighteen; and the Judiciary has not established specialized sentencing courts in twenty-two years of the Childhood and Adolescence Code. It is concluded that the main deficit lies neither in the volume of detention nor in normative will, but in the use of pretrial detention and in the incomplete specialization of the system, matters on which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has already condemned the Paraguayan State.