An Additional Element

There's a provision in the new national security law that increases penalties on soldiers who defect and offer their services to organized crime groups, up to 60 years in some cases. One lawmaker complained that this is more than three times the jail time a soldier faces for murder, and indeed there does seem to be a broad lack of coherence to the sentencing scheme. In any event, while increasing the length of sentences allows lawmakers to look tough, the key challenge remains reducing impunity, which is much more complicate.