Over the last few weeks, the justice systems have been the object of various criticisms and distrust due to their operation in the face of various crimes and the use of the precautionary measure of preventive detention, which has been questioned by the cases of the people who remain in prison under this precautionary measure without facing trial for crimes within the framework of the social outbreak.
In this sense and in conversation with The Counter at La Clavethe lawyer and former prosecutor, Carlos Gajardo, addressed the problem and argued that in recent times, the population’s confidence in the justice systems has been declining, as recorded by various OECD studies on the subject.
“The big problem that the justice system has today is the lack of trust that citizens have in it and that is due to the international studies that the OECD does annually that have shown how that trust has also been decreasing. In the last decade the percentage of people who trust drops from 34% to 15%,” he said.
“If one compares oneself with Latin American countries, with Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, where one would think that we are better off, the subjective tells us that the people, the citizens, have very little trust in the justice system and that is tremendously serious” , he complemented.
In this sense, the former head of the High Complexity Prosecutor’s Office of the Eastern Zone pointed out that this issue has not attracted attention within the various justice institutions in the country, which in his opinion is intentionally ignored.
“The issue of lack of trust is something that is deliberately ignored, it is like an elephant in the room that we refuse to look at. And there, the way in which high authorities are appointed is key in what is a constitutional spring” , commented.
Another of the points that has delved into this situation is the “extensive” use of the precautionary measure of preventive detention, which has received various criticisms by the people who remain in said precautionary measure against crimes in the context of the social outbreak, which In the opinion of the former prosecutor, it is used in one type of crime, but not in “neck and tie” crimes.
“We certainly have a problem with preventive detention, but for a type of crime, for normal crimes, from the street, robbery. I would say that there is extensive use of preventive detention, and there rather the solution has to go by favor the efficiency of decision-making in cases that prevent us from having trials that last a long time and therefore, such extensive preventive prisons,” he emphasized.
“Along with that, one has to look at how preventive detention is used for other types of crimes, neck and tie crimes, and the truth is that it is not used there. The case of Karen Rojo, for example, with a very serious, of fraud to the Treasury that finally resulted in a conviction, he was not even a day in preventive detention, because it is estimated that this type of precautionary measures are for other types of criminals, “he reflected.
Given this, the challenge arises of how to recover the confidence of the population in the justice systems that protect them, which is why Gajardo says that this has been dragging on for a long time, which is why a “mea culpa” on the part of of the judicial institutions and place emphasis on said sentiment of the population.
“What the statistics show us is that this has been going on for a long time, we were already at a level of 15%, which is where we are now, in 2016, two years before the outbreak and it was already shown that there was a deep mistrust of citizenship with its justice system, In general, we have strong mistrust in Chile with the institutions, but it is especially serious when that happens in the justice system,” he said.
“When confidence in this restoration system is lost, the consequences are very dramatic. The effects are very pernicious, and for this it is necessary to do a very powerful job that is from day to day. It is not easy to repair it,” he concluded.
