Drug traffickers ``deserve capital punishment,'' Castro said in remarks broadcast Thursday night. ``I hope that our judges will not be too weak to apply it.''
Crime has ``internal political consequences,'' Castro told an auditorium full of police this week in a long speech celebrating the 40th anniversary of the National Revolutionary Police. The speech was broadcast in two parts Wednesday and Thursday by state television.
``On you depends internal order, and if we lose the battle for internal order, then we lose everything,'' Castro said, promising better training, support and pay for ``the best police in the world.''
Castro said market-oriented economic reforms in Cuba -- which followed the 1991 collapse of the Soviet bloc -- had encouraged crime by bringing in dollars, tourists and new foreign businesses.
He underlined the point by describing the case of two Spanish investors accused of using a business in Cuba to help launder money and ship drugs from Colombia to Europe.
Castro demanded tougher sentences and urged judges not to shy away from the death penalty, which was common in the 1960s and 1970s but has been rare in the past decade.
``For attacking homes without people present, and more if they are present, I hope that the penalties will be at least 20 years and up to 30 if necessary. And up to life in prison for repeaters,'' he said to cheers from the police.
Noting that many people convicted of running prostitution rings had been let off with fines, Castro said, ``there was a need for stronger measures.'' He said the crime should lead to at least 20 years in prison.
Prostitutes, he said, are victims who should be ``re-educated,'' with family and neighbors stepping in before police were involved.
The Cuban leader also urged tougher sentences for drug traffickers, saying the increase of that crime ``pains me greatly.''
He noted that 18 foreigners were arrested in November on charges of trying to smuggle cocaine through Cuba to Britain. Castro also said 227 foreigners had been arrested for drug violations since 1995, with 157 sentenced to prison.
Castro said Cuba seized 7,745 pounds of cocaine and marijuana between January and November 1998, almost double the levels of previous years.
Some drugs have leaked into domestic use, sometimes supplied by Cubans who retrieved and sold errant packages of drugs dropped off the coast by traffickers, Castro said.
More than 1,200 Cubans were arrested last year for drug offenses, he said.
Once remarkably free of street crime and violence, Cuba has seen a surge in prostitution, robbery and theft. Many residents have installed security bars on their houses.
Declining state rations have made it hard for many residents to live on state salaries that average $10 a month. At the same time, new dollar-only stores tempt Cubans with quality food, clothes and electronics that few can afford.
Castro complained that the United States had failed to cooperate adequately in fighting terrorism and the trafficking in drugs and people.
He said U.S. drug officials had failed to alert Cuba about a ship they had been following that was detained in Cuba and found with cocaine.
He also accused the United States of failing to act against anti-Cuban terrorists on American soil. ``There is a considerable volume of extremists and crazies in that country,'' he said.
Castro also complained that U.S. courts repeatedly freed air and sea hijackers from Cuba and said the U.S. government encouraged the ``grave, repugnant'' trafficking in migrants by granting Cubans who reach U.S. shores automatic residence.
Castro said Cuba last year frustrated at least 90 foreign-aided attempts to flee the country illegally, involving 660 people. Organizers charged as much as $8,000 per person.
But he also criticized what he called ``hypocrisy and cynicism'' in foreign reports about the crime and prostitution in Cuba, noting that many European publications are filled with advertisements for prostitutes.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press