Criminal Justice

The penal system does not operate solely on the basis of laws. Its functioning depends significantly on how the institutions that compose it are organized, the pressures they face, and the daily decisions their actors make. The Criminal Justice research line at CIDS examines from a sociolegal perspective how the Chilean penal system is structured and operates, analyzing the tensions between its normative ideals and concrete institutional practices.

For example, we have studied the organizational evolution of the Public Prosecutor's Office, exploring how the institution has adapted its work models in the face of often contradictory demands: the need to manage a massive caseload, pressures to show results in public security, and the mandate to respect procedural guarantees and due process principles. Our approaches seek to shed light on how penal institutions balance considerations of efficiency, legitimacy, and legal culture in their daily functioning.

Our research also examines the dynamics of prosecution of different types of crimes, from minor offenses to complex cases such as economic, environmental, or corruption crimes. We analyze how the organizational characteristics of the system influence which crimes are prosecuted, with what intensity, and with what results, revealing patterns that often escape the formal design of norms.

Finally, we address contemporary transformations of the penal system as a whole, investigating phenomena such as sustained increases in incarceration rates, the reactions of penal institutions to migration phenomena, and the institutional and social factors that shape the aggregate results of the system. We seek to provide rigorous academic evidence to better understand how criminal justice actually works in Chile.