Fair, impartial, and expeditious? Some indicators of sentencing performance from Latin America

• In Event: Can Global Corrections and Sentencing Performance Measures be Developed?

Abstract

We are well aware that the administration of criminal justice is neither timely nor efficient in Latin America. In this paper, we examine one facet of this problem: sentencing and correctional control. The results of a prison inmate population survey conducted in 6 different countries of the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Peru, and Mexico) in 2013 are presented for review. We found that important differences arise among countries in the region in the sentencing of offenders and the utilization of various mechanisms of correctional control

What would explain these differences? This paper looks for a set of possible performance-focused explanations, based on the review of available sentencing and corrections data from these six Latin American countries.

Author

• Carlos Vilalta, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)