The Plan Calles Sin Violencia (Streets Without Violence Plan), created under the government of Gabriel Boric, has been renamed Plan FOCO, according to Emol. The subsecretaria de Seguridad (Undersecretary of Security), Pilar Gianini, denied that the program has ended or that it faces cuts.
"There are no cuts, and the Plan Calles Sin Violencia is not ending," Gianini said. According to the official, the plan was reformulated and keeps its funding and its continuity for 2027.
The undersecretary noted that the program had received observations from the Dirección de Presupuestos (Dipres, Chile's budget office) and from the Contraloría General de la República (Chile's Comptroller General's Office). For that reason, she explained, the Executive's work aimed to improve it.
According to the Government, the original design had "relevant deficiencies." Among them, it cites targeting problems, a "weak coordination between its components," and difficulties in measuring its results comprehensively.
The figures reported by Emol show a slight increase. The current Ley de Presupuestos (Chile's annual Budget Law) allocates $26,016,603 million to the plan. In the bill the Executive sent to Congress, the amount reaches $26,765,581 million.
The main change lies in the crimes the plan prioritizes. The Government drops the broad concept of "complex criminality" and focuses on completed and attempted homicides, serious or very serious injuries, and other violent crimes committed with firearms.
The Subsecretaría de Seguridad Pública (Undersecretariat of Public Security) will formally take on the coordination, monitoring and governance of the plan. The investigation, patrol and arms control areas will share information and work under a single logic.
The new design also adds indicators. With them, the Government wants to measure whether the prioritized crimes decline, evaluate the results of investigations and monitor compliance with arms inspections.
Targeting will use criteria of severity, frequency and territorial concentration. The plan covers a target population of 116 comunas (Chilean municipalities), with annual intervention in 47 of them, based on technical prioritization and operational capacity.
Patrolling will not change substantially. Carabineros (Chile's national police) will concentrate their services in the areas, days and hours defined by crime analysis. In addition, the plan strengthens the Fiscalía's (Public Prosecutor's Office) Equipos contra el Crimen Organizado y Homicidios (ECOH, Organized Crime and Homicide Teams) and the work of the Policía de Investigaciones (PDI, Chile's investigative police).
The explanations did not convince everyone. Boric's former ministra del Interior (Interior Minister), Carolina Tohá, questioned the change in a conversation with EmolTV. "That is really petty politicking," she said. She described the decision as "very mean-spirited and very marketing-driven" for a program that, in her view, had good results.
Tohá said she does not understand the logic of discontinuing the program, because its components remain the same: strengthening criminal prosecution, keeping the ECOH units and stepping up arms inspections. In her view, the Government has still not managed to leave "campaign mode" and enter "government mode."
Funding for Plan FOCO in 2027 will depend on the passage of the Ley de Presupuestos in Congress.
