CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

It is common to hear about the CRIME AND PUNISHMENT in specific those that hit our society
frequently, it goes without saying that, initially, the punishment has been established for all types of
crimes. The first occasion was the death penalty that God pronounced to the first human couple for
their crime of disobedience. Today, our country has a law to apply this historical teaching.
First, Hate crimes occur when a person attacks another motivated only for being part of a certain social
group, age, sex, religion, race, socio-economic level, nationality, or political affiliation. Bolivia has a law
against Racism and All Forms of Discrimination that establishes seven years in prison for racism and five
for discrimination, on the other hand in recent law projects, verbal aggressions are also sanctioned with
fines, community services and there is the possibility of public retraction. It even proposes to sanction
minor acts of discrimination with work for the benefit of the community, for example, the guilty should
clean the main square.
Second, Theft is a crime against property, it consists in obtaining the property of others, using violence
and intimidation in people, according to the national law this type of vandalism is punishable by
deprivation of liberty for 2 to 6 years and could even reach 10 years if the theft was committed with
weapons or if it was committed by two or more authors.
Murder is a crime against the life of a person that consists in killing it with treachery, cruelty or price
competition. These circumstances have different meanings for Bolivian law for example treachery is
when it is known that the victim will not be able to defend himself, cruelty is when the victim is tortured
and price competition is when the crime is exchange for economic or material retribution, the murder
is punishable by a penalty ranging from 15 to 20 years in prison, rising to 25 years if it occurs with any
combination of the three mentioned previously.
Drug trafficking is the trade of toxic substances, this includes the manufacture, distribution, sale, market
control and recycling of narcotics potentially harmful to health, the Bolivian law punishes the
commercialization of drugs from 11 to 20 years in prison, the supply of drugs from 8 to 12 years and
the person who buys them could have a penalty of 1 to 4 years in prison.
It is well known that justice in Bolivia has great defects which are taken advantage by national and
international criminals, however I firmly believe that everybody can contribute to improve our justice
for example we could denounce any crime, or promote values in our environment and even demand
more control border in order to prevent the entry of foreign criminals that only damage our society.