Security is built neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, with presence, technology, and measurable results.
Eighty-two days into his presidency, José Antonio Kast stood before Chile's Congress and offered something his critics said he lacked: a plan. With homicide figures trending downward but public confidence eroding, Kast used his first State of the Union not to declare victory, but to reframe the terms of the struggle — asking a skeptical nation to measure progress in steps rather than leaps, and in neighborhoods rather than headlines.
- Public trust is fracturing: 65.7% of Chileans believe the government has no concrete security plan, and Kast himself dropped six points in a single month on his perceived ability to fight crime.
- The instability is structural — Kast is already on his second security minister in under three months, and the ambiguity surrounding the administration's direction has carried a measurable political cost.
- To arrest the slide, Kast unveiled a layered offensive: a Vandal Registry stripping social benefits from offenders, intensive police operations across fifty high-risk neighborhoods, and seven specialized task forces targeting everything from cybercrime to criminal finances.
- He also moved to shore up the institutions themselves, announcing pay raises for police cadets, quarterly salary bonuses for officers, and explicit government backing for the use of legitimate force.
- The prison system received its most ambitious overhaul in three decades — 20,000 new beds by 2030, paired with rehabilitation programs, signaling a philosophy that punishment alone does not reduce crime.
- The homicide rate is falling, the announcements are made, but the harder test begins now: whether specificity can rebuild the public trust that ambiguity has already spent.
President José Antonio Kast arrived at his first State of the Union address eighty-two days into his term carrying a political liability: most Chileans didn't believe he had a security plan at all. He had promised order. The polls were returning doubt.
The numbers he cited were not without merit — homicides had fallen from 444 to 378 over the same period the prior year — but the public wanted velocity, not trajectory. The day before his address, Kast had already begun softening the frame, telling residents in Villa Alemana that his campaign promises would be kept, but step by step. It was a careful recalibration from a man whose steepest polling decline had come on the very question of whether he knew how to fight crime.
On Monday, he answered with specifics. A Registry of Vandals and Incivilities would deny social benefits — education subsidies, pensions, housing — to those convicted of attacking public servants or committing lesser infractions like illegal graffiti or public drug use. Fifty critical neighborhoods would receive intensive, targeted police operations. Seven task forces would be stood up with distinct mandates covering organized crime, cybercrime, human trafficking, kidnapping, illicit markets, criminal finances, and violence in the southern Macrozone — each with monthly accountability measures.
Kast also moved to defend and reinforce the institutions themselves. He announced pay improvements for police cadets and quarterly bonuses across the force, and offered explicit political cover for officers who use legitimate force in the line of duty — a pointed signal given years of scrutiny over police conduct.
For the prison system, he described the most significant modernization in over thirty years: more than 20,000 new beds by 2030, paired with education, job training, and addiction treatment. "A prison that only locks people away," he said, "ends up returning more dangerous criminals to the street than when they entered."
The full strategy was set to be presented to the Senate the following day. The homicide trend was moving in the right direction. But the deeper question — whether a nation that had stopped believing in the plan would begin to again — remained open, and the answer would come not from the address itself, but from what followed it.
President José Antonio Kast stood before Congress on a Monday morning, eighty-two days into his term, and did what he had promised his voters he would do: he made security the centerpiece of his first State of the Union address. But he also did something else. He lowered expectations.
"Security is not something that changes from one day to the next," he told the chamber, a statement that seemed aimed as much at the polling data as at the legislators in front of him. The numbers he cited were real enough—homicides had fallen to 378 through May 31st, down from 444 in the same period the year before—but he knew his audience wanted faster results. The day before, standing in Villa Alemana, a city about eighty kilometers south of Santiago, he had already begun the work of reframing his ambitions. "Everything we promised in the campaign, we will deliver," he told a group of residents. "But step by step. We will confront illegal immigration step by step, and we will go after criminals step by step."
The political ground beneath him was shifting. Polls showed that sixty-five percent of Chileans believed the government had no concrete security plan at all. Only nineteen percent thought otherwise. In another survey, Kast himself had dropped six points in a single month on the question of whether he knew how to fight crime, falling to thirty-eight percent—his steepest decline on any measure. His first security minister, Trinidad Steinert, had already been replaced by Martín Arrau, the second person to hold the job in less than three months. The ambiguity about whether a plan even existed had cost him dearly.
So on Monday, Kast announced specifics, though he was careful not to oversell them. He would send Congress a bill creating a Registry of Vandals and Incivilities, a database designed to punish people convicted of crimes like attacking police officers, healthcare workers, or bus drivers—or even those guilty of lesser infractions like illegal alcohol sales, public drug use, or unauthorized graffiti. Those registered would lose access to social benefits: free education, universal pensions, housing subsidies. He also unveiled a plan to deploy intensive police operations across fifty critical neighborhoods, with targeted patrols and focused raids on illegal markets and criminal organizations. Seven specialized task forces would be created, each with a specific mandate: borders and ports, kidnapping and contract killing, cybercrime, organized crime, illicit markets, criminal finances, and violence in the southern Macrozone. Each would have monthly targets and someone responsible for reporting results.
Kast's language throughout was the language of order and coordination. "Security is not decreed on paper," he said. "It is built neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, with presence, technology, and measurable results." He spoke of moving from a fragmented response to a coordinated offensive that would pursue criminal organizations through their leadership, their integration, their territory, and their money.
He also spent considerable time defending the police. Carabineros, the detective force, and the prison service had all been under scrutiny in recent years for allegations of excessive force. Kast made clear his government would take a different approach. "When a carabinero, a detective, or a prison guard, in the performance of their duty, makes use of legitimate force, this government supports them and will always support them," he said. He announced plans to improve pay for carabinero cadets and to provide quarterly bonuses to raise police salaries across the board.
For the prison system, Kast outlined what he called the largest modernization in more than thirty years. A new infrastructure plan, running through 2030, would add more than twenty thousand beds to the system, reducing overcrowding. But he insisted the approach would combine maximum security with genuine rehabilitation—education, job training, addiction treatment, and specialized intervention in partnership with the private sector. "A prison that only locks people away and does nothing about rehabilitation ends up returning more dangerous criminals to the street than when they entered," he said.
The question now was whether these announcements would move the needle. Arrau was scheduled to present the full security strategy to the Senate the next day. Kast would meet with his security committee that afternoon at the presidential palace in Viña del Mar. The homicide numbers were trending in the right direction, but the public remained skeptical that the government had a real plan. Kast had bought himself some time by managing expectations. Whether he could deliver on the details would determine whether that skepticism faded or hardened.
Citas Notables
Security is not something that changes from one day to the next.— President José Antonio Kast, in his State of the Union address
When a carabinero, a detective, or a prison guard makes use of legitimate force in the performance of their duty, this government supports them and will always support them.— President Kast, defending law enforcement
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did Kast spend so much time saying security takes time? That seems like an odd message for someone elected on a security platform.
Because the polls were telling him his voters were losing faith. Sixty-five percent thought he had no plan at all. He needed to reset the conversation—to move from "I will fix this immediately" to "I understand this is hard and will take discipline."
But doesn't that risk looking weak? Like he's already backing away from his promises?
It's a gamble, yes. But the alternative was to keep overpromising and watch his credibility erode further. He's trying to build trust through honesty about the timeline, even if it's not what people want to hear.
The vandal registry seems like a different kind of policy—punishing minor infractions by cutting social benefits. That's quite aggressive.
It is. It's targeting the behaviors he sees as degrading neighborhoods—graffiti, public drug use, illegal alcohol sales. The idea is that these small incivilities compound into a sense that order has broken down. Whether it works depends on whether people see it as justice or as punishment that goes too far.
And the prison plan—twenty thousand new beds by 2030. That's a massive undertaking.
It is, and it's expensive. But Kast is framing it not as a cost but as an investment in security. He's also trying to thread a needle: maximum security for the worst offenders, but real rehabilitation programs so people don't come out worse than they went in. That's harder to deliver than either approach alone.
So the real test is whether any of this actually reduces crime, not just whether it sounds good.
Exactly. The homicide numbers are moving in the right direction, but that could be statistical noise or the effect of policies from the previous government. Kast has to show sustained improvement, and he has to show it faster than he's now saying it will come. That's the tension he's living in.