The impact of criminal justice reforms on perceptions of procedural justice

• In Event: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries Virtual Poster Session 2

Abstract

Since the 1990s, all over Latin America governments have introduced important reforms to transition towards an accusatorial (or adversarial) model of criminal justice. Among many other changes, these reforms aim to improve “procedural justice”, that is: fairness in how decisions are made. For many decades, research conducted in developed countries has suggested that quality of treatment is more important than outcomes for how fair the criminal justice system is perceived and for overall institutional legitimacy. Furthermore, it has been widely assumed that adversarial systems tend to increase perceptions of fairness when compared to inquisitorial systems. But, has that been the case in the context of Latin America? To this day it remains an overdue task to learn if the transition towards an adversarial system has had an impact on the perceptions of procedural justice among defendants. Using survey data, in this paper I will provide preliminary findings from a project that aims to learn how inmates perceive procedural justice in four countries in Central America.

Author

• Veronica Michel-Luviano, John Jay College-CUNY