en qué consistió la Reforma Procesal Penal del año 2000 y qué aportó a la aplicación de justicia en chile

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.