A report by the Justice and Legislation Observatory showed that in this 2021 the drop in the percentage of those convicted with effective imprisonment continued and reached 63%, after the months of 2020 in which the law of urgent consideration was in force was given the first sample that reached 71.7%. Even so, the record number of prisoners has been reached: why?
It can be due to a number of reasons. On the one hand, the universe of convicts increased, which explains the increase in the prison population whose connection with the Urgent Consideration Law is still being discussed by experts.
On the other hand, the percentage falls due to the elimination of the conditional suspension of the process. This resource, removed in the LUC, was an agreement between the accused and the prosecution by which, if the accused complied with the conditions of the Public Ministry, he could prevent the crime he committed from being prosecuted. This possibility did not exist for those crimes that exceeded three years in prison as a sentence, if the accused was serving a sentence or if he had another process with conditional suspension pending. This change introduced by the LUC is not among the 135 articles that the opposition intends to repeal.
As it is an agreement between the parties, it is not included in the total number of convictions that was calculated when the LUC did not exist. Asked about what happened with this type of crime in which conditional suspension was applied in a scenario where that is no longer possible, Henry Trujillo, coordinator of the observatory, told The Observer: “What we assume has happened, because it is impossible to know for sure, is that those conditional suspensions that were eliminated mostly become abbreviated processes that end with a sentence released and that explains the drop in the percentage“.
According to the data in the report, obtained through the system of the Attorney General’s Office, in 2021 (the period from November 1, 2020 to October 31, 2021) 89.4% of the cases were resolved by abbreviated or simple process. The latter was introduced by the LUC and is the least used.
The first implies that the defendant accepts the facts charged against him and the background of the investigation, and can be applied from the formalization until the moment in which the prosecutor makes the accusation or asks the judge to dismiss the case. As a result of this acceptance, the prosecutor calculates a sentence that can be reduced by up to a third (although not less than the minimum provided by law for that crime). It can be used as long as a crime is typified with four years in prison or a non-custodial sentence, with the exception of homicide with special aggravating circumstances or very special aggravating circumstances.
Then that agreement between the two parties (Prosecutor’s Office and accused) is approved before the judge, who makes sure that all the guarantees have been fulfilled and that the accused understands that with this agreement he is admitting his guilt. This process is irreversible, that is, there is no possible appeal.
Beyond that, in the report they detail that the percentage of those convicted with effective prison varies according to the crime. For example, in robberies, in 2021 it was almost 82%, while in the fraction of 2020 in which there was LUC, it had been close to 89%. In the case of thefts, the percentages vary: they were 70.4% in the second half of 2020 (considered until September 30, 2020) and 66% in 2021.
The case of drug-related crimes is where the biggest difference is noticeable: 84.9% in 2021 were punished with prison. In 2020, the amount had been 78% before the LUC was in force and 88.8% afterwards.
