Justice Institutions in Latin America: The "Arrest and Convict" Machine

Chapter 6 examines the particular role of justice institutions in the incarceration wave that has yielded such a dysfunctional and overpopulated system. Our analysis focuses on arrests done by police, criminal prosecution, and trials in order to assess the types of cases that end up in criminal convictions, the type of evidence used to convict, and the role played by defense lawyers. We examine the overreliance on flagrancy detention, police and prosecutor collusion with crime, and corruption. This chapter shows that by targeting the most visible crimes, prosecutors process the easy cases, and judges rarely require high standards of proof as evidence to convict.