Whenever a person is declared innocent and regains their freedom at the end of a criminal proceeding in which they had been deprived of liberty under pretrial detention, a question of elementary justice arises: who gives back to this person the time they were deprived of their freedom?
Such responsibility — imposing a restrictive measure on liberty — should not be taken lightly; unfortunately, the reality of our criminal justice system is inversely proportional to the urgency of this need.
Thus, we see daily how a perverse system of persecution has become institutionalized in the country: people are temporarily deprived of their liberty through arrest warrants issued for false investigative purposes, feigning non-existent flagrancy to hastily initiate the fiscal investigation behind the backs of the parties, and at the same act, the overused pretrial detention is imposed to secure and extend over time the deprivation of liberty that had been fraudulently achieved up to that point on a temporary basis. All this with the complicity of the so-called criminal guarantees judges, who often only guarantee impunity for these true judicial kidnappings, in many cases sponsored by public opinion manipulated through the media.
It is true that measures must be implemented to ensure that those responsible for a criminal act answer to justice, and among these, pretrial detention appears as the most effective measure.
In fact, deprivation of liberty is a sufficient guarantee of remaining in the process (which contrasts with its exceptional nature because it burdens a human right: liberty, and is imposed against a due process guarantee: the presumption of innocence); however, the State has historically failed in its obligation to ensure that the conditions under which this measure is carried out are not inhumane, so that it does not become a punishment, a kind of early sentence, when the inviolable maxim is and must always be the presumption of innocence.
Let us demand that the State begin by accepting reality: our prison system is inhumane, the criminal procedural system is a tool of persecution, and liberty and life are trampled daily. Only once this reality has been accepted can the long-awaited changes occur.
Pretrial Detention - Crime and Punishment
5 min de lectura
CARLOS LUIS SÁNCHEZ GAETE
When a person is declared innocent after having been in pretrial detention, a fundamental question arises: who gives back that lost time? This dilemma reflects a serious justice problem that must be addressed by the State.