Chile improves its safeguards in the first hours of detention

he Mission to Chile of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in its report of 12 December 2019, highlighted the importance of the presence of public defenders in police stations , with the aim of being able to interview people detained during the first hours of detention . According to the High Commissioner, the lack of an interview with detainees prior to the hearing on precautionary measures “could constitute a violation of the right of persons deprived of liberty to have immediate access to legal advice and to have adequate time to prepare their defence”. 

Despite being one of the most developed countries in Latin America, Chile still has large gaps in terms of equality and access to rights . This has been evidenced by the events since 18 October 2019 on the occasion of the social protests that still persist in the country. During the weeks that the social outbreak lasted, an undetermined number of people, who remained deprived of liberty in police stations, could not be attended to by the Public Defender. 

In this national context, the European programme, EUROsociAL + coordinated by the FIIAPP, is accompanying the Chilean Public Defender to define and implement a special system for safeguarding rights in the first hours of detention . 

As part of this accompaniment, a virtual working meeting was held to make a diagnosis of the situation in the first hours of detention. In addition, the models and experiences of different countries in Latin America and Europe were analyzed and compared.