ANÁLISIS COMPARADO DE LAS REFORMAS DE LOS SISTEMAS DE JUSTICIA PENAL Y CRIMINOLÓGICOS INTERAMERICANOS

Abstract

In several criminal justice systems, elected or politically appointed leaders are combined with career public servants. This organizational hybrid creates challenges at the intersection of democratic accountability and enforcement discretion. In times of trouble in criminal justice policy, those challenges are largely invisible: the public, elected officials, and civil society servants often share a unity of interest, born of like-minded political commitments that have developed over the weather. But at 2 times of political transition, that is, when public preferences for criminal justice policy are changing, the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy can be strained. The public demand for change may or may not be in accordance with the commitments, ideals, and culture of front-line actors in the bureaucracy. Elected leaders are voted in with high expectations for transformative change, but it may be hampered by institutional resistance to it. The bureaucracy, in turn, may try to alter the political narrative that is fueling the political transition, further complicating the democratic process. And in a system in which legislative and criminal enforcement power is distributed among different levels of government with overlapping authority, the complexity of the interaction between the “public” and the bureaucracy deepens.