The killing on Tuesday of Jean-Claude Bossard, a 29-year-old from Bogotá who lived most of his life in Barranquilla, deepened the discussion about recidivism in the Colombian capital and the effectiveness of justice. The city’s mayor, Carlos Fernando Galan, admitted that he had been alerted about the gang that caused the attack. After the murder, a police officer shot one of the attackers and arrested the other, a 16-year-old minor who was on probation after being arrested in May for robbery. This murder adds to other recent crimes: on November 2, three individuals killed Alejandro Ladino, 33, for stealing his bicycle in the town of Engativa, west of the city; On the thirteenth of this month, Hector Mauricio Latorre, 73 years old, was killed in the town of San Cristobal, in the southeast, when he tried to defend a group of young men from a robbery.
“These events are a wake-up call for everyone. This cannot continue to happen. Despite warnings, criminals continue to commit crimes,” said Galland, who asked that arresting killers in robbery attempts be prioritized. However, even when arrests are made, detainees are easily released. For this reason, the mayor said Bossard’s killing “hurts us more because we were alerted.”
The case shows how the city suffers from recidivism, a national problem. According to the Foundation for Excellence in Justice, and with data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, it is a growing phenomenon. In 2016, the judicial system issued criminal sentences to 114,417 people, of whom 18,750 (16.4%) were repeat offenders. By 2024, the total number of convictions reached 109,764, and 22.6% of them were actually recidivists, of whom 24,858 were. Daniel Mejia, former Security Minister of Bogotá, points out that between 2012 and 2019, 52% of people arrested by police had already been arrested and 63% of those charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office had previous charges. “The pattern has not changed, and in Bogotá the situation is much worse,” he says.
Furthermore, an RCN report in May revealed that only 3% of those arrested for personal injuries in Bogotá end up in prison: of the 1,687 arrested for this crime, only 57 were imprisoned. “The main problem of crime in urban areas is recidivism and impunity, whether for minor or serious crimes,” Mejia asserts. This is because, on many occasions, prosecutors responsible for legitimizing arrests, laying charges and requesting security measures arrive “extremely angry about the criminal background of the accused,” the former secretary adds.
The city has improved its homicide numbers, which is a very visible crime. Figures from January to October 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, show a decrease from 103 to 98 cases, according to the region’s security secretariat. But in the same time period, thefts from people rose dramatically from 11,851 to 13,055, an increase of 10.1%.
This Wednesday, in his speech at the Presa Media Summit “Vision 2026”, Galland stated that all this is due to “the weak capacity of the public force”, “the strengthening of criminal gangs as a result of the increased drug production in the country” and “rules that allowed the release of people arrested after committing crimes”. He noted that 7 out of every 10 people arrested for vehicle theft in Bogotá end up being released. This year, the number of people arrested for this crime reached 390, and 273 of them have already been released. “It’s not a problem with prosecutors or judges, it’s a problem with the base,” said the mayor, a centrist politician. Mejía agrees that the rules for imposing preventive detention are “too lax” and believes it is necessary to make a legal change that would allow those who are arrested three times in a year or two to be automatically imprisoned, even for minor crimes.
Galán also lamented that Bogotá is “by far” the Colombian city with the lowest number of police officers per 100,000 inhabitants, “but it is the city in greatest demand.” The capital has about 200 agents per 100,000 inhabitants (less than 16,000 in total), while the national average is about 310. The president also stressed that the reduction in force occurred as the population grew: “12 years ago it had 20,000 police officers, today it has 5,000 fewer officers, with a larger population.”
The mayor noted that the strengthening of criminal gangs at the national level also contributed to this, saying: “The drug trafficking network is linked to networks of mobile phones or stolen vehicles, extortion and criminal markets.” For Mejia, this too is indisputable. The strengthening of criminal groups in the country inevitably has an impact on the security of cities, and there is an “overreach in the justice system, which it is no longer able to deal with.”
In this sense, Galland insisted on the need to “review regulatory rules, strengthen police capacity and local control mechanisms,” as well as find a way to “ensure that there is effective justice when someone commits a crime.”