en qué consistió la Reforma Procesal Penal del año 2000 y qué aportó a la aplicación de justicia en chile?
A large number of Latin American countries—not just Chile—have
undergone a process of social change. In the case of Chile, the reform
of its criminal legal procedures has been related to the need for the
country to join the globalized world.
This initiative dovetailed with the interests of law scholars and
academics, who considered Chile’s criminal justice system to be
completely obsolete.
Chile’s criminal procedure was already obsolete by the time the
initiative was passed into law with a recommendation that it be replaced
as quickly as possible.1
This old criminal justice system remained in effect for nearly 100
years.
These ideas were expressed very succinctly in this message the
Executive Branch presented to the Chilean Congress along with the
proposed Code of Criminal Procedures for its approval in 1995: “While
the system of administration of justice in Chile was fundamentally
designed and established in the middle of the nineteenth century, and it
has remained wholly unchanged since that time, Chilean society hasbeen transformed both economically and politically.”2
This reform
process was implemented through the promulgation of laws that
established a program for gradual implementation following a specific
schedule that began in December of 2000, and culminated in June of
2005, when the new criminal justice system took effect in the entire
country.
In the Latin American context, the phenomena described are the
direct and indirect origins of the reform processes of the justice systems,
and they have found two main individual routes to that end. The first
route was adopting clauses included in international agreements,
primarily free trade agreements and the second route was driven from
university classrooms and by academic publications.3
This Essay will briefly explore the new criminal procedures in Chile,
their context, and their successes and remaining challenges. Part II of
this Essay examines the impact of political decisions to go forward with
the transition of the Chile’s criminal justice sector from one that
operates within the inquisitorial system to one that embraces the
adversarial system. In Part IIA, the weaknesses in the inquisitorial
system are explored. In Part IIB, this Essay explores the criminal
procedure reform process in Chile and the changes that were
implemented. In Part IIC and Part IID, respectively, the principles of
the reform are explored and the roles of different participants are
explained. In Part IIE, the paradigm shift that has occurred in Chile is
explored briefly. In Part III, this Essay examines the unintended
consequences of the criminal procedure reform, and in Part IV, this
Essay concludes by exploring how wrongful convictions still take place
in Chile. This Essay also concludes with the call to action: Chile, like
all Latin America, needs to embrace new technologies to help the
wrongfully accused and convicted be freed from unjust imprisonment.
