From punishment to restoration: reflections on the Public Utility Law in Colombia
Prof Dr Norberto Hernández Jiménez (left)
Norberto Hernández Jiménez holds a PhD in Law from Universidad de los Andes and a Master’s in Criminology and Criminal Enforcement from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He also completed specialisations in Constitutional Law and Administrative Law at Universidad del Rosario and obtained his law degree from Universidad Libre. He is currently an Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Co-Director of the Center for Studies in Criminology and Victimology (CECRIV), a member of the Social Justice, General Legal Theory and Political Theory Research Group, and an Associate Judge of the Special Chamber of Investigation of the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia.
Lorena Cecilia Vega Dueñas (right)
Lorena Cecilia Vega Dueñas holds a PhD in Law and a Master’s in Latin American Studies from the University of Salamanca. Her academic background also includes a specialisation in Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law from Universidad Externado de Colombia and a law degree from the University of Salamanca. She is currently an Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Co-Director of the Center for Studies in Criminology and Victimology (CECRIV), a member of the Public Law Studies Research Group, and an Associate Judge of the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of Colombia.
Introduction
The Law 2292 of 2023 adopted affirmative measures for women heads of household in the areas of criminal and penitentiary policy. This post presents the main elements of this law and analyzes its restorative orientation, based on some of the main doctrinal and jurisprudential contributions, as well as official statistics on its application. The text is structured in three parts: first, it examines the content and scope of the law; second, it presents the main data, contributions, and difficulties related to its implementation; and finally, it analyzes the restorative dimension of the law based on three elements: encounter, reparation, and transformation. The text concludes with a reflection on the law and its restorative scope.
Public Utility Law: regulation
In Colombia, Law 2292 of 2023 establishes measures in the areas of criminal and penitentiary policy in favor of women heads of household, recognizing not only the historical discrimination and care roles imposed upon them, but also the differentiated impact they experience when deprived of their liberty (Colombian Constitutional Court, Judgment C-256 de 2022).
The law establishes that, when the convicted woman expresses her willingness to do so, the prison sentence may be replaced by the provision of public utility services, provided that the following conditions are met (Art. 2):
i) The person must be a woman head of household. For the purposes of the law, this refers to a woman who assumes primary responsibility for the household and bears affective, economic, and social responsibility for minor children or persons with permanent disabilities (Art. 7).
ii) The conviction must correspond to low-severity offenses, such as theft, drug trafficking, or other offenses punishable by a prison sentence of eight (8) years or less. The measure applies even if the person has not been held in pretrial detention, since the substitution of the sentence is granted at the time the conviction is issued or while the person is already incarcerated. The measure does not apply when the sentence of eight years or less corresponds to the offense of domestic violence, nor when the conduct involves the use of minors in the commission of offenses (Art. 7). It also does not apply when the woman has a criminal record, understood as a final conviction for an intentional offense within the five (5) years preceding the commission of the new offense.
iii) It must be demonstrated that the commission of the offense is associated with conditions of marginalization that affect the support of the household.
The Colombian Constitutional Court (Judgment T-147 de 2026) and the Supreme Court of Justice (Judgment SP456 de 2026) have established that the following three requirements must be met: the particular status of a woman who is the head of a household; a specific criminal profile; and the consent of the beneficiary.
Public utility service consists of unpaid work performed by the convicted woman in her place of residence, for the benefit of public institutions, nonprofit organizations, or non-governmental organizations. These activities must be aimed at restoring the social fabric affected by the offense and may include, among others, the recovery or improvement of public spaces, support or assistance to victims, assistance to vulnerable communities, or educational activities (Art. 5). The law requires five hours of community service for each week of the sentence imposed or remaining, subject to a maximum of eight hours per day and twenty hours per week, without interfering with work or education (Art. 5).
Public Utility Law: data, progress, and challenges
On the one hand, according to projections by Colombia’s Ministry of Justice and Law, 5,942 women nationwide meet the legal eligibility criteria to access the benefit. Of this total, 1,423 are incarcerated at the El Buen Pastor penitentiary in Bogotá (Ámbito Jurídico, 2025). On the other hand, the information on the monitoring of the implementation of the Public Utility Law reveals a considerable gap between the law’s normative scope and its practical implementation (Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, 2026). Although approximately 5,942 women meet the eligibility criteria, only 277 had benefited from the measure as of July 2026, representing an implementation rate of approximately 4.7%. Furthermore, the data show that the main offense committed by women benefiting from the measure is drug trafficking, manufacture, and possession.
Beyond the perspective offered by the data, it is possible to identify some of the advances brought about by the law, as well as the challenges encountered in its implementation.
On the one hand, the Public Utility Law has represented significant advances, mainly related to the incorporation of a gender perspective and its potential to promote resocialization processes (Moncayo y Olarte, 2023).
This is a law that seeks to incorporate a gender perspective into the country’s criminal and penitentiary policy, recognizing the vulnerable conditions faced by women deprived of their liberty, particularly in cases involving offenses such as drug trafficking and theft. Likewise, Law 2292 of 2023 seeks to overcome some of the limitations of resocialization as a purpose of punishment while, at the same time, reducing the differentiated impacts experienced by women as a consequence of incarceration.
Some of the impacts of imprisonment on women that have been documented are related to precarious housing conditions and difficulties in accessing basic goods and services, limited opportunities to receive preventive and specialized medical care, as well as the separation of mothers from their children when the latter reach the age of three, without adequate psychological support. These effects are compounded by the loss or weakening of emotional and family ties, among other consequences that demonstrate the particular effects that incarceration can have on women (Sánchez-Mejía et al., 2018).
The potential to promote resocialization processes as one of the advances of the Public Utility Law is particularly relevant in the context of the Unconstitutional State of Affairs in Colombia’s prison and penitentiary system, as declared by the Colombian Constitutional Court, which is characterized, among other factors, by overcrowding, undignified conditions of detention, and the massive and systematic violation of fundamental rights (Colombian Constitutional Court, Judgments T-153 de 1998; T-388 de 2013; and T-762 de 2015). In this context, it is particularly relevant to note that, according to data from the Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho (2026), the recidivism rate among the beneficiaries is currently 0%. Although these results are preliminary and correspond to a still limited sample, they constitute a positive indicator of the measure’s effects in preventing recidivism and promoting processes of resocialization and social reintegration.
On the other hand, the Public Utility Law has faced various difficulties in its implementation, mainly involving dissemination challenges, conceptual challenges, and evidentiary challenges.
The first challenge has been to ensure that women—both those deprived of their liberty and those involved in criminal proceedings—have access to adequate, clear, and relevant information about this new law (Cardona et al., 2026). Insufficient dissemination, outreach, and awareness of the law contributed to the low number of beneficiaries during its initial implementation phase. For example, in Bogotá, the country’s capital, the first woman accessed the substitution of her sentence one year after the law entered into force (Ministerio de Justicia y del Derecho, 2024).
A second challenge has been related to the judicial interpretation of two fundamental concepts: “head of household” and “marginality,” whose meanings have oscillated between restrictive approaches and broader interpretations (Ceballos et al., 2024). In this context, the Constitutional Court recently ruled on the scope of these requirements, with the aim of ensuring a uniform and constitutional application of Law 2292 of 2023 (Colombian Constitutional Court, Judgment T-147 de 2026). With regard to marginality, the Court stated that it is a contextual criterion that must be assessed based on the social, economic, and family circumstances of each individual case, without requiring, for example, that the woman demonstrate that committing an offense was her only alternative for supporting her family. Regarding the status of a woman head of household, the Court reiterated that this must be assessed from a substantive perspective and considering the actual dynamics of the household. Consequently, the existence of family support networks or the absence of a situation of abandonment or absolute lack of protection of the children do not exclude the status of a woman head of household. As a precursor to this ruling, on May 20, 2026, the Criminal Cassation Chamber of the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice replaced the 60-month prison sentence imposed on a woman with 1,304 hours of unpaid public-interest community service (Judgment SP456 de 2026)
Finally, a third challenge concerns the difficulties women face in gathering the evidence and documentation necessary to support their applications for public utility service as an alternative to imprisonment. This is partly explained by the loss of support networks following admission to prison, which makes it difficult to obtain documents demonstrating their vulnerable circumstances. In cases where applications are submitted incompletely, some judges have frequently responded by directly denying the measure (Cardona et al., 2026).
Public Utility Law: restorative dimension
According to Colombia’s Ministry of Justice and Law, “the Public Utility Law is the first legal provision to contemplate the possibility of enforcing a criminal sanction in a restorative manner” (Pesquisa Javeriana, 2023). To determine whether this sanction effectively fulfills such a character, three central elements of restorative justice are examined below: encounter, reparation, and transformation (Skelton, 2007; Zehr, 2010).
The first restorative dimension is the encounter between the parties affected by the offense—victims, offenders, and community representatives—aimed at humanizing the conflict and making visible both the needs and the responsibilities arising from it. Although the law provides for the possibility that public utility service may include direct support or assistance by women offenders to victims, this element is primarily realized through the encounter between the offenders and the community. This occurs through activities such as the recovery of public spaces, assistance to vulnerable populations, or support in the implementation of public works (Corporación Mujeres Libres & Dejusticia, 2023). Although we endorse its restorative purpose, its retributive dimension should not be overlooked: community service requires a sacrifice of time and restrictions on other rights to compensate for the harm caused by the offense.
Nevertheless, to strengthen this restorative dimension of encounter, it is necessary to reinforce the mechanisms for monitoring, accompaniment, and supervision of public utility services through the participation of specialized officials, rather than delegating this function exclusively to the receiving entities. Adequate institutional supervision would not only make it possible to verify the effective fulfillment of the activities and ensure that they respond to the objectives established by law but also ensure that their implementation has a genuinely restorative meaning and does not become reduced to the mechanical performance of unpaid work. Likewise, such accompaniment could facilitate a stronger connection between the activities carried out and the needs of communities, promoting spaces for responsibility, recognition, and participation. In this way, it would contribute to strengthening the legitimacy of and trust in this type of sanction among victims, judicial actors, communities, and society as a whole (Orozco, 2025).
The second restorative dimension is the reparation of the harm caused to the affected parties, understood not only in material but also in symbolic terms. Although, within the framework of the Public Utility Law, most cases do not provide for direct reparation to the individual victim, this element is realized through reparation to the community by means of the various services and activities performed by the women beneficiaries. In this sense, the sanction reflects a change in its function: it moves away from an approach centered on retribution and moves toward the restoration of the social fabric (Hernández y Vega, 2022).
However, strengthening this restorative dimension of reparation requires the competent state entities to guarantee sufficient availability of placements for the performance of public utility activities (Cano, 2024). Otherwise, informal allocation practices, misinformation, and false expectations—particularly through intermediary organizations—may arise and could lead to situations of exploitation or mistreatment of women beneficiaries. In this regard, the Ministry of Justice and Law has quantified the operational capacity for implementing the measure, indicating that 2,549 placements for the provision of community services have been created nationwide. These placements are supported by agreements with public entities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (Ámbito Jurídico, 2025).
The third restorative dimension is the transformation of both individual actors and the community as a whole. It could be argued that this is the component with the greatest potential of the Public Utility Law. On the one hand, transformation may occur among women beneficiaries when they begin to perceive themselves not simply as offenders serving a sentence, but as agents capable of assuming responsibility for the offense and the harm caused, contributing to society through public utility activities, and rebuilding their life projects, as well as their family and personal relationships. On the other hand, transformation may occur both in the judicial and social spheres when crime is no longer understood exclusively as a conflict between the State and the offender and is instead recognized as a conflict that also involves victims and communities, who play a fundamental role in the pursuit of justice and in the construction of reparation processes.
However, to strengthen this restorative dimension of transformation, it is necessary for the State to design, consolidate, and, above all, coordinate complementary measures aimed both at women beneficiaries and at society as a whole. In particular, programs grounded in gender-sensitive and intersectional approaches are required (CIDH, 2023) to facilitate social reintegration and contribute to overcoming structural barriers and cycles of marginalization in areas such as employment, education, finance, and health (Giraldo et al., 2024). At the same time, it is necessary to develop community programs aimed at reducing stigma and discrimination against persons who have been deprived of their liberty, since reintegration cannot be understood as the exclusive responsibility of the beneficiaries, but rather as a process that also requires transformations within institutions and society.
In conclusion, Law 2292 of 2023 undoubtedly represents a significant advancement in Colombian criminal and penitentiary policy by introducing non-custodial sanctions for women heads of household and incorporating a gender perspective. However, the data reveal a significant gap between its normative scope and its practical implementation. Likewise, it can be affirmed that the law has a restorative orientation, although its restorative character ultimately depends on the specific conditions under which the measure is implemented. Effective implementation requires, among other aspects, uniform application, adequate mechanisms for supervision and accompaniment, as well as complementary and coordinated measures aimed at supporting women, their families, and communities. Ultimately, public utility service should not simply constitute a less restrictive alternative to imprisonment, but rather a measure aimed at promoting responsibility, reparation, and transformation, so that it can fully develop its restorative potential. The central question, therefore, is not only whether imprisonment is replaced, but what is put in its place and for what purpose.
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