The first point of access: a justice of the peace

In a tiny courtroom off a dusty street in Soyapango, a large working-class suburb of San Salvador, Lesvia Alvarenga Barahona is describing a typical day’s work. As a justice of the peace under the new criminal code, Alvarenga stands at the front line of access to El Salvador’s judicial system. In contrast to her predecessors, who did little more than refer cases to a higher court, Alvarenga runs a full-fledged courthouse that serves as a one-stop shop for all kinds of legal problems. She is authorized to conduct binding conciliations on offenses that have maximum jail terms of up to three years—a category that makes up much of the traffic in her court. She conducts arraignments for serious crimes and decides whether suspects should be put in preliminary detention or given a conditional release. She even handles civil and commercial cases involving less than 10,000 colones (around $1,100).

These responsibilities can be overwhelming. Alvarenga’s operating budget is so small that she must train her own staff and use her personal car to take suspects to detention centers. Still, she is a spirited defender of the new criminal codes and procedures. “We no longer have that bureaucratic process of drafting written statements, sending them to the judge, telling people to come back another day and wasting all kinds of time,” she says. “Now, people come in and the case is usually solved the same day.”