Costa Rica avoided mano dura but not its logic: security policy hardened through civilian punitive measures that narrowed democratic space rather than addressing the roots of violence. During the 2000s, rising petty crime created incentives to judicialize insecurity. The introduction of fast-track courts in 2009, presented as a response to an inefficient justice system, produced a sharp increase in the prison population. As a result, Costa Rica now ranks twenty-second globally in prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants and holds the third-highest incarceration rate in Central America.
During the 2010s, as the region became a key site of drug-trafficking, Costa Rica’s security policy continued to harden, supported by US security assistance, new taxes to finance the Ministry of Public Security, and the creation of the Border Police. The COVID-19 pandemic further intensified these dynamics, particularly in tourism-dependent coastal areas that became flash points for organized crime. This period was also marked by increasingly spectacular violence and a sharp rise in the homicide rate, from around six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000 to over sixteen by 2025.
It was under these conditions that Costa Rica’s trajectory converged more clearly with that of the rest of the region through the politicization of crime.