¿Who is Francisco Domínguez Brito?

Francisco Domínguez Brito, born October 28, 1965, in Santiago, is a Dominican lawyer and politician. He has been Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of the Dominican Republic (2016), Minister of Labor (2011), Senator (2006), Attorney General of the Dominican Republic (2004 and 2012), and District Attorney of the National District (1997).

What is Francisco Domínguez Brito's full name?

Francisco Javier Tadeo Domínguez Brito. Son of Mr. Pedro Domínguez Rosario and Mrs. Elsa Brito de Domínguez.

In Congress, he stood out for being the senator with the most laws approved in the four-year period 2006-2010; he made significant contributions to the Constitution of the Republic, proclaimed in 2010, and received wide acceptance for managing a vast cultural and educational agenda in favor of his province Santiago.

As the District Attorney of the National District and Attorney General of the Republic, Francisco Domínguez Brito pursued and achieved significant convictions in crimes that shocked Dominican society in the last decades of the 20th century and promoted a program of institutionalization of the criminal prosecution and penitentiary systems. As Minister of Environment, he rescued important protected areas and national parks that were invaded and illegally occupied. He is a member of the Political Committee of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD).

He completed his primary and basic studies at the Colegio de La Salle in Santiago. In 1988, he obtained a law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM). In 1991, he completed a Master's in Social Thought at the same university and a Master's in Civil Law at the Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, France.

In the private sphere, he has been a legal advisor to the Chamber of Deputies of the Republic, professor of 'History of Political Ideas' at PUCMM, Executive Director of the Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (FINJUS), as well as a consultant to the National School of Magistracy in relation to the Implementation Program of the New Criminal Procedure Code; of the Project to Support the Reform and Modernization of the State (PARME), which operates with funds from the European Union; and of the Research Project on Judicial Statistics implemented by the Center for Justice Studies of the Americas (CEJAS) whose headquarters is located in Santiago de Chile, among other institutions. Furthermore, he is a Public Notary of the number of the Jurisdiction of Santiago, a member of the Santiago Lawyers Association and the Dominican Republic Bar Association. On August 16, 2004, by presidential decree 861-04, President Leonel Fernández Reyna appointed Francisco Domínguez Brito as Attorney General of the Republic. Upon assuming the position, he was only 38 years old and thus became the youngest Attorney General of the Republic in contemporary history. He then declared that his administration would be based on the sacred commitment to honor the truth, respect due process, and guarantee constitutionally protected rights for all Dominicans.

The Institutional Challenge of Francisco Domínguez Brito

Upon assuming office as Attorney General, Francisco Domínguez Brito developed a strategic plan that started from the analysis of the challenges presented to the Public Ministry by the New Criminal Procedure Code (approved two years prior), the implementation of the Statute of the Public Ministry (approved one year prior), its interrelation with the other entities of the Justice System and society. In order to effectively respond to the new procedural order, the Public Ministry was oriented to establish the necessary dependencies and units to guarantee better treatment and technical and scientific specialization. It received an institutional budget of 654 million Dominican pesos (approximately 18 million USD).

Training and Capacity Building.

Aware that the task of theoretically adapting the Public Ministry for a new procedural scheme and the necessary implementation of the prosecutors' career was of a monumental nature, Francisco Domínguez Brito decided to address both issues simultaneously. The initial training of candidates for career prosecutors on the one hand and the training of current prosecutors on the other through the 'Extraordinary Training Programs' was carried out through the new National School of the Public Ministry (ENP). The first promotions of career prosecutors were incorporated from the year 2006.

In the management of resources and priorities.

Technically adapt and equip the Public Ministry with appropriate technological resources required a considerable budgetary boost, so Francisco Domínguez Brito ensured that the allocation for the year 2005 doubled that of the previous year (reaching 1.1 billion Dominican pesos). Due to the marked deterioration and deplorable conditions it presented, the transformation of the penitentiary system was promoted through the accelerated conversion of prison facilities to the so-called "new penitentiary model".

In the first stage, 9 of the 35 prisons in the country were incorporated into the new model. When the Attorney General's Office took over the penitentiary system of the country, it barely received 16% (110 million Dominican pesos) of the institution's total budget; by 2006, after two years of prioritization, the expenditure had increased to 34% (509 million Dominican pesos).

The technicalization of criminal investigation needed to be institutionalized, and on several occasions Domínguez advocated for the creation of a judicial technical police. It was during this period that the National Institute of Forensic Sciences (INACIF) was established. Inter-institutional cooperation and transparency. As Attorney General, Francisco Domínguez Brito was appointed as a member of the Technical Unit of the National Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (CNECC).​ From here, they promoted important initiatives related to the regulation of the State's purchasing and contracting regime, first through a Presidential decree and then through the bill that would later govern the matter. Public ethics commissions were also created, and programs were established to promote and foster the principles established in the Code of Ethics for Public Servants (Law 120-01).

The new institutional framework in the Attorney General's Office of the Republic. Under this administration, the following were created:

• the Victim Assistance Office; the Criminal Information System (SIC); the Anti-Money Laundering Unit of the Public Ministry;
• Neighborhood or community Prosecutor's Offices, implementing alternative dispute resolution, in order to offer quick access to justice, contributing to the discharge of cases, social peace and alleviating the workload that previously characterized the old inquisitorial system;
• Specialized centers for the care of domestic violence in the National District, the province of Santo Domingo, Santiago, La Vega and Baní; in order to strengthen the programs of attention to victims of family abuse; raising awareness of the institutions that usually detect cases of family violence, especially the police, school and health authorities, so that they provide adequate care to the victims and, where appropriate, seek the intervention of specialized institutions.

Francisco Domínguez Brito - Senator for the province of Santiago (2006-2010)

As Attorney General of the Republic, Francisco Domínguez Brito, on February 1st of the year 2006, requested a provisional license to get involved in the electoral process to be held on May 16th of that year: "(...)I want to inform that today I am proceeding to request a three-month leave of absence without pay..., starting February 16th of this year in order to assume the candidacy for the senatorship for the province of Santiago," he said.

On August 8, he formally resigned from the position of Attorney General to assume the senatorship for the Province of Santiago.

Thus, having been the official candidate for the PLD during the congressional and municipal elections held in the Republic on May 16, 2006, Francisco Domínguez Brito became the elected senator for the province of Santiago by obtaining 156,499 valid votes (53.25%).

He was sworn in on August 16 of that same year by the President of the Senate of the Republic, Reinaldo Pared Pérez. He served as chairman of the Justice and Human Rights Commission, responsible for deciding on issues related to the judicial organization, the creation and suppression of courts, the approval and discussion of codes and procedural laws, the prison administration; as well as the protection and safeguarding of fundamental rights and public freedoms.