Alfredo Cornejo's government sent the lower house a comprehensive reform of Mendoza's Public Defense and Child Protection Ministry. The bill amends Law 8,928, creates new units, activates offices established by earlier laws and expands the powers of Defender General Cecilia Saint-André. Its stated goal is to improve free access to justice for vulnerable people and balance coverage across the province's four judicial districts.
Territorial expansion includes a Civil Defense Office in General Alvear and three new advisers for children, adolescents and people with restricted legal capacity. Two will be based in San Rafael and San Carlos; the third will be located in the First District, with the exact site chosen by the Defender General. The bill also activates offices in Las Heras and Villa Tulumaya, Lavalle, previously created but not operating.
The initiative also creates two Family Defense Offices with province-wide jurisdiction. They will handle family law, childhood, adolescence and domestic violence and coordinate co-defenders currently dispersed among judicial districts. Centralization may improve specialization and common criteria, but territorial presence must be preserved so people in the interior are not dependent on metropolitan teams.
In criminal matters, a Prison-Execution Defense Office will be added in the First District. It will supervise sentence enforcement, intervene in sanctions or detention conditions and protect constitutional rights of prisoners. The office addresses a sensitive phase in which defense obligations continue after conviction and in response to penitentiary decisions.
The most controversial change concerns administrative powers. The Defender General may create, merge and reorganize structures, distribute jurisdiction, set schedules and substitutes, determine staffing and transfer defenders or advisers for service reasons. Transfers within one district will not require consent; movement to another district will require the magistrate's approval and preservation of rank and status.
Flexibility may correct overload and adapt teams, but it also concentrates authority over officials with technical independence. The law requires general, objective and previously established criteria. Legislative and judicial oversight must ensure transfers respond to real needs, are not informal sanctions and do not disrupt sensitive cases.
The bill provides a transition regime and authorizes Saint-André to decide when new offices begin and how pending cases are redistributed. It sets no concrete deadlines, although it includes posts created in 2026 and planned for 2027. Gradual implementation may be useful, but necessary offices could be delayed without a public timetable, budget, buildings and technical staff.
Legislative debate must balance expansion of free defense with independence, predictability and control. New offices in General Alvear, San Rafael, San Carlos, Las Heras and Lavalle improve the institutional map, but results depend on resources and actual operation. The next step is to define budgets, locations, staff and transfer rules so the reform does not remain a legal architecture without service capacity.
