Steinert defends security management, formalizes national plan amid crime surge

Trinidad Steinert stood before an auditorium full of security experts, government officials, and business leaders on a Thursday afternoon in Las Condes and opened with a stark declaration: Chile is in a state of emergency. The Security Minister, a 55-year-old lawyer who spent two decades as a prosecutor before taking the helm of one of President José Antonio Kast's most critical portfolios, had come to defend her first sixty days in office and to lay out a formal plan for confronting the crime wave that has swept across the country.

The numbers she presented were difficult to ignore. Since 2021, homicides have climbed 20.4 percent. Kidnappings have surged 56.4 percent. Extortions have exploded by 194.8 percent. These are not abstract statistics—they reflect the arrival of transnational criminal organizations that have begun to establish themselves throughout Chile, exploiting border regions and urban centers alike. Steinert had seen this firsthand. In February 2024, she took over as regional prosecutor in Tarapacá, a zone on the country's northern frontier where organized crime thrives. Under her direction, her office secured a conviction against one of the Tren de Aragua's most significant cells in Chile, including its leader, Carlos Leandro González Vaca, sentenced to life imprisonment.

But her record as a prosecutor did not insulate her from criticism. Two days before the Thursday seminar, she had presented her security plan to the Chamber of Deputies in a special session. Experts dismissed her announcements as slogans. Her predecessor, Luis Cordero, had publicly accused the ministry of improvisation. The opposition demanded concrete action, not rhetoric. Steinert had asked for patience—let the government be judged by year's end, she said in an interview. "Let us work," she told reporters. "Results cannot be immediate."

At the seminar, organized by La Tercera and the Latin American Development Bank, Steinert outlined a three-pillar strategy: recovery of territorial control by the state, increased police effectiveness and criminal prosecution, and institutional strengthening. The plan operates along seven strategic axes, ranging from combating organized crime and terrorism to preventing crime at its roots, bolstering police capacity, coordinating with municipalities and civil society, and addressing emerging security challenges. She promised transparency. The plan would be formalized by resolution within days, she said, and the government would measure everything—homicides, robberies, kidnappings—to track progress and communicate results to the public, even if those results proved unfavorable.

Steinert also announced a significant investment in police recruitment and training. The monthly stipend for cadets entering police academies currently averages 80,000 pesos. The government would propose raising that to 300,000 pesos in the first year of training and 800,000 pesos in the second, an effort to attract and retain qualified personnel in institutions that have been stretched thin.

In defending her tenure, Steinert pointed to concrete operational results. In sixty days, she said, her ministry had overseen more than 7,000 arrests, with detainees handed over to the justice system for flagrant crimes or outstanding warrants. She highlighted operations in Ercilla, specifically two incursions into the Mapuche community of Temucuicui on May 6 and May 13—the first time the state had entered that territory since 2023. "It is extremely important to highlight this entry into a place where the state had not set foot since 2023," she said, drawing applause. "And we will continue. And we will continue."

The applause was telling. In a room full of security professionals and policymakers, Steinert's assertion that the state was reasserting control in places it had lost resonated. Yet the broader challenge remained unresolved. Crime continues to rise. Criminal organizations continue to entrench themselves. Steinert has staked her credibility on measurable progress by year's end, on a formal plan that will be subject to public scrutiny, on the belief that two months of work can be the foundation for something larger. Whether that foundation holds will become clear in the months ahead.