This paper offers an analysis of the
reforms to the Youth Criminal Justice Act introduced by Act N° 21,527. For
this, firstly, it reviews the background of the legal body in question and then
examines the twelve most relevant reforms, using specialized literature and
comparative law.
Tags: juvenile justice, reform Act N° 20,084, juvenile
social reintegration, Chilean juvenile justice
This paper is an English translation and enriched version of an article previously published in Revista de Derecho Penal y Criminología (Argentina), XV (4), 201-225 available in https://bit.ly/4jZ7qzE
On June 8, 2007, Chile finally had a
juvenile justice system with the enactment of Law No. 20.084 on Adolescent
Criminal Responsibility (hereinafter LRPA). In his inaugural address, President
Ricardo Lagos (2005:2) outlined some of the central ideas of the new
legislation:
“The answer to juvenile delinquency, then, is the
construction of a juvenile justice system, which is what this law establishes—a
strict but fair system that punishes criminal acts committed by adolescents
while adhering to the guarantees of due process. That is what is new.
Accountability means taking responsibility for actions that violate legally
protected rights, such as life, liberty, harm to others, and property, but the
sanction is part of a broader socio-educational intervention aimed at social integration.
This is the fundamental element: the sanction also addresses how we can
intervene to facilitate subsequent social reintegration.”
Punishment and rehabilitation were thus
incorporated into Chilean criminal law, through article 20 of the LRPA, as aims
of the new system and, at the same time, as differentiating elements of the
state's reaction to crime committed by adults. (Bates 2007)
In these eighteen years it has only
been modified in very minor aspects on four occasions.
On January 12, 2023, Law No. 21,527 was
published. This law has a dual purpose: First, it creates the National Juvenile
Social Reintegration Service and thus ends the National Service for Minors
(SENAME), due to successive crises of this public agency (Castillo-Gallardo et
al., 2022, Estrada and Jara, 2023). Secondly, it substantially modifies various
aspects of Law No. 20,084.
This paper aims, firstly, to provide
the contextual background of the legal framework in question, and then to
review the most relevant reforms in light of specialized literature and
comparative law. International human rights law for children and adolescents
will also be used on occasion for comparison, in order to increase scrutiny of
the introduced modifications.
