The national prosecutor, Jorge Abbott, expressed concern after the increase in homicides and the current criminal scenario in the country. In this sense, he indicated that prosecutors are introducing new methodologies for the criminal prosecution of illicit acts. In addition, he recognized a “funding problem” within the Public Ministry.
Regarding the current scenario, Abbott maintained that there has been “an increase in the crime of homicide in recent years, particularly in the last year and especially due to the way in which homicide crimes are committed.”
“Until not long ago, Chile was characterized by having a very low homicide rate, today we continue with a low rate in relation to Latin America but it is a worrying rate in terms of the increase in recent times. What is happening is that we find ourselves with a phenomenon that until now was strange in our reality, that we have a high number of unknown defendants,” he added.
Along the same lines, the national prosecutor warned that “historically, homicides were committed in family contexts, in human groups where it was possible to identify the perpetrators of these criminal acts. Today, with the spread of organized gangs, with the appearance of hired assassins, we found that the number of unknown defendants increased significantly”.
“Today the homicides are committed, for example, with the intention of stealing vehicles and subsequently marketing those vehicles,” he added.
On the other hand, Abbott reported that there has been a drop in the number of vehicles recovered after being stolen, “which speaks to the fact that there is a market with respect to which we have to address the investigation. And that is why we are doing it from the point from the point of view of criminal analysis and investigative focuses, and we already have more than ten focuses in the Metropolitan area, precisely where we are trying to find out how the gangs behind these types of events operate and organize themselves”.
The persecutor stressed that the Public Ministry is shaping its strategies to improve the prosecution of crimes, he stressed that “a greater number of prosecutors is not necessarily going to have a higher rate of clarification. The prosecutors direct the investigations, but those who do the investigations are the police and it is precisely the investigative strategies that have to change”.
“Yesterday I met with the Minister of Finance (Mario Marcel), and he pointed out that probably, in the next administration of the Public Ministry, a new plan to strengthen the Public Ministry will have to be formulated, since we definitely have a problem of endowment, with respect to which the State must also take charge in order to improve the effectiveness of criminal prosecution,” he stated.
