POLÍTICA CRIMINAL EN CHILE: ENTRE LÓGICAS TECNOCRÁTICAS Y PARTICIPACIÓN CIUDADANA

This paper deals with the production of legal instruments in Chile, as a revelation of the tensions between technocratic logics and the demands of citizen participation, which challenge the model of public management in the country. To this end, it takes the experience of the Preliminary Draft Criminal Code recently presented by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of Chile (2018), posing the question of the participatory component in its elaboration. Although the perspective is fundamentally national, we reviewed some comparative experiences. We will not discuss in detail dogmatic issues that are reflected in the normative proposals. The reason is our assumption that the method conditions the result and that therefore it is a determining factor. We wonder about the pertinence of broadening citizen participation in the elaboration of normative proposals in criminal matters and what advantages and/or difficulties could derive from it. Our hypothesis is that the more participatory the process of constructing a draft Penal Code is, the greater its potential social impact will be. We investigate whether there are previous experiences of citizen participation in the elaboration of criminal policy proposals, as well as whether the levels of “punitivity” of the population constitute an applicable argument against greater citizen participation. We conclude that several of the drafts of the Penal Code presented in recent years reveal a technocratic conception of public management, contributing to the depoliticization of social conflicts. Consequently, citizens turn away from politics and state institutions lose legitimacy and prestige.