Minister of Justice, Yesid Reyes Alvarado, and Attorney General, Eduardo Montealegre Lynett proposed a draft bill to delimit preventive detention orders to two years.
The project was proposed before the Senate Secretary´s Office by the two senior officials in order to optimize the use of this legal-criminal tool as its implementation has been expanded and have overcrowded prisons. The purpose of the draft bill that will be introduced at the First Senate Committee is to solve overcrowding problems and relieve obstructions in justice.
The Attorney General said that this project places an emphasis on the trend that has been worked with the National Government whose purpose is to create a “garantista”* Criminal Law that protects fundamental rights during the process, since a preventive detention order should be an exceptional measure taking into account that the main rule of a criminal procedure must be freedom.
Minister Reyes stated that judges are going to be required not only to analyze the conduct for which the person is being investigated but also to predict what will be the person´s behavior during the trial, as stated at the courts jurisprudence. During a hearing, it will have to be demonstrated that the non-custodial sentences are insufficient to assure the appearance of the accused person before a trial and insufficient to the non-participation of other criminal conducts.
*Garantista: a word used to express that something protects and guaranties human beings rights (generally a Law). Human beings rights prevail.