Abstract
Approximately 740,000 women are incarcerated worldwide. While most of the world’s prison population is male (10.8 million), the rate of female incarceration outpaces that of men by almost three times (60% compared to the 22% rise between 2000 and 2022). Besides holistic social policies, effective alternatives to incarceration for women are essential to counteract the escalation of female imprisonment.
As Colombia’s Deputy Minister of Justice, I led the implementation of a gender-based restorative justice program aimed at replacing prison sentences with social work for marginalized women convicted of low-level crimes. Targeting 40% of the country’s incarcerated women, the program has been applied in over 240 cases, achieving an extraordinary 0% recidivism rate up to February 2026—compared to the national average, which exceeds 25%. This paper describes the program, emphasizing practical insights about how to implement gender-based programs with a restorative justice perspective and the main challenges encountered during the design and early implementation. There are few academic reflections on the issue of criminal law policy implementations.