Association of Magistrates affirms that there is no “soft hand” with criminals

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SANTIAGO. - The general secretary of the Association of Magistrates, Jaime Arancibia, indicated today that there is no “soft hand” on the part of judges when the time comes to arraign criminals. This statement was made in response to critiques of how quickly some criminals seem to be set free.

Yesterday the undersecretary of the Interior, Felipe Harboe, coincided with the director general of Police, José Alejandro Bernales, in expressing that-although it is an exception to the rule- there have been cases in which judges allow for the release of repeat criminal offenders.

With respect to the topic of repeat offenders, Arancibia stated that detentions should be greater because “repeat offenses demand punishment. That is in the Law, it cannot be modified, but we cannot simply count the number of detentions, it’s very subjective” he indicated.

According to the general secretary, in the Chilean system repeat offenses are punishable by the Penal Code, and are considered to be an aggravated lack of responsibility “which means that the criminal will receive a more severe sentence in the legal proceedings of a repeat offense, that is the sanction that they receive”.