translated from Spanish: Ombudsman seeks to “review 3,000 cases” to revoke pre-trial detention of defendants and prevent Covid-19 contagion

Two weeks ago, the Criminal Justice System Coordination Committee agreed to generate efforts and reduce the number of defendants in pre-trial detention. All this, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis and the affectation it could have in prisons. In this sense, he was the head of the Human Rights Unit of the Public Criminal Defender’s Office (DPP), Tomás Pascual, who explained that “thinking of the group of crimes that are not within the most serious, in addition to the first-timers and convictions that are historically not custodial, we aspire to try to review 3,000 cases,” he told La Tercera. However, Pascual argues that the figures show no progress. Between 3 March and 14 April, 1,132 review hearings for precautionary measures have been requested from the DPP, of which 750 have taken place and 242 have been released from prison. The courts have also rejected 508 petitions, while the Public Prosecutor’s Office in 621 cases has refused to change pre-trial detention. In this regard, Pascual argued that the Public Prosecutor’s Office “initially opposed everything, even though the Public Prosecutor’s Office had expressed its willingness to be able to review cases of pre-trial detention, which is regrettable because an 80 percent opposition is opposed to almost all cases.” For their part, the National Prosecutor’s Office stated that “the national prosecutor prepares the dictation of an instruction for the country’s prosecutors, whose objective is to use the same criteria established in the draft commutative pardon law, benefiting a group of accused persons deprived of liberty for less serious crimes and intransablely excluding those who are held by the commission of serious crimes”.

Original source in Spanish