Fewer people expect the Mexican inquisition
Americans seem to assume that the adversarial system of enforcing laws (used in the USA, Canada, and the UK) is "normal." It's not, but more countries are trying it out. Mexico is slowly making changes.
Judging Latin America’s judges
ONE morning this year, in a windowless modern courtroom, Jorge Alberto Rodríguez faced justice. He was accused of driving a stolen car with changed number plates. The judge began by explaining his rights to him. His lawyer then tried to trip up the policemen whom the prosecution had produced as witnesses. To no avail: after an adjournment to allow a missing defence witness to appear via video link, the judge found Mr Rodríguez guilty. That seemed to square with the evidence. Having been on bail for the nine months since his arrest, he was given a suspended jail sentence of five years and fined 15,000 pesos ($800).
Such a trial could have taken place in a British magistrate’s court. In fact, it was in Mexico City. The case was conducted under a radical judicial reform. This replaces an inquisitorial model, long the norm in Latin America, under which judges investigated and evidence was all in writing… The new system has taken more than a decade to roll out and is more expensive. But it has several advantages. Fewer defendants are remanded to overcrowded jails, cases are heard more quickly and the prosecution must publicly prove its case. Under the old system, judges relied on confessions (often extracted by torture).
Yet the reform is much criticised. Its introduction has coincided with a big rise in violence in Mexico. Although this was caused mainly by the fragmentation of criminal gangs and their move into new lines of business, many politicians blame the reform instead. Judges and prosecutors are insufficiently trained in the new ways and many are going back to “old practices”…
Mexico’s experience is not unique. Since the 1990s the main focus of judicial reform in Latin America has been on criminal procedures. In all, 15 countries have made the switch to the adversarial system. This is an improvement, but not a panacea…
Many Latin American countries have reformed their economies, electoral systems and welfare states. But establishing the rule of law is much harder. Courts depend on many other actors, especially police and prosecutors, as well as politicians and citizens. Judicial reform nearly always involves trade-offs, especially between independence and accountability. And better procedures do not in themselves create better judges or justice…
Judicial reform in Chile, as well as Mexico, has produced some improvements... But public vigilance has to be sustained if a reformed judicial system is not to lapse into bad ways…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
Labels: judicial system, Mexico, rule of law
Effects of violence on government and politics - 2
How are the demands on government and the state in Mexico similar to and different from those in Nigeria?
Mexico’s murder rate heads for a new record
IN APASEO EL GRANDE, a town in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the bodies are stacking up… In the first three months of this year the municipality of 85,000 people had 43 murders, up from 20 in all of 2016. That is about the same as London, a city 100 times larger and currently panicking about its high murder rate…
The town and the state it belongs to are suffering from a double blow. One is a national crime wave, during which the murder rate broke through its previous record of 2011. That peak came after the then president, Felipe Calderón, deployed the army to fight drug gangs. His tactic of capturing or killing kingpins caused the gangs to split into warring factions and to enter new lines of business. The current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office in 2012, promised to halve the murder rate. Instead, after an initial decline it rose sharply…
The rise in violence is among the main issues in the general election scheduled for July 1st. Nearly half of Mexicans say crime is the main problem in their area…
Guanajuato’s prosperity, once thought to deter crime, now seems to be attracting it. The state’s south is part of an industrial corridor that stretches from Aguascalientes to Querétaro. Factories in the region produce cars and other goods for tariff-free export to the United States and Canada under the North American Free-Trade Agreement. A quarter of Guanajuato’s workforce is employed in manufacturing…
Mexico’s location, between South America’s coca fields and the United States’ drugs market, makes it vulnerable. But the persistence of violence is the fault of a weak state, and especially of inadequate policing, prosecution and courts. Widespread corruption greatly worsens the problem…
Police investigate just a quarter of murders. In part that is because there are too few police… Police and officials are underpaid, and thus tempted to work for criminals rather than against them. They are also poorly trained. In many states, more than 90% of arrests are of suspects caught red-handed, which shows that police have little capacity to investigate crimes more than an hour or two after they happen…
Another problem is co-ordination. Mexico has municipal, state and federal police forces, plus the army, which Presidents Calderón and Peña pressed into service against criminals. In many states municipal and state-level police do not use the same radio frequencies and therefore cannot communicate…
Areas where violence has surged recently are especially unprepared to deal with it. Guanajuato has one forensics specialist per 10,000 crimes; the national average is 18. Police numbers there are less than a quarter of the interior ministry’s standard…
Mr Peña’s efforts to improve policing have largely failed. He proposed creating a 40,000-strong force that would establish control over areas infested by crime. But the government cut back its funding and the army refused to let civilians command it…
A more promising initiative is a reform of the criminal-justice system, which is taking place gradually across the country. This shifts courtroom procedures away from document-based decision-making by a judge [inquisitorial] to argumentative methods used in the United States [adversarial]…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
What You Need to Know 7th edition is ready to help.
Order the book
HERE
Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Labels: judicial system, Mexico, political culture, rule of law, violence
Roadblock to international judicial cooperation
China's President Xi calls for more judicial cooperation among countries. This is an appropriate place to point out that China (along with Russia, China, and Mexico) uses an
inquisitorial judicial system.
 |
| Chinese procurator badge |
The prosecutor (procurator) investigates cases, makes finding (of guilt or liability) and takes cases to a judge, who declares an appropriate sentence or settlement.
In the
adversarial system most familiar to people in the US (and Britain and Nigeria) a prosecutor goes to court to prove the guilt of an accused criminal. The accused is represented by an attorney (in most cases) and tries to disprove the accusation. (In civil cases, parties are both represented by attorneys trying to prove the case they brought to court or to disprove the case brought against their client.)
Iran uses Sharia law which is different from both inquisitorial and adversarial systems.
Can you describe some ways in which cooperation between judicial officials in the different systems would be difficult?
Xi calls for more international judicial cooperation
The Chinese government attaches great importance to advancing the rule of law, and China is willing to have more judicial cooperation with other countries, according to President Xi Jinping.
Xi made the remarks in a letter of congratulation to the 22nd annual conference and general meeting of the International Association of Prosecutors…
"As representatives of the public interest, prosecutors shoulder important responsibilities," Xi said…
Xi stressed the Chinese government attaches great importance to the rule of law and has continuously pushed forward legislation in a scientific way, with strict law-enforcement, judicial justice and law compliance by all citizens.
"China works to ensure the country, the government and society are all under the rule of law," the president said.
Xi said Chinese procuratorates are important players in protecting the national and public interest, as they have the functions of punishing and preventing crime and supervising litigation.
Xi encouraged prosecutors from all around the world to share their experience in protecting the public interest and advancing the rule of law to deepen judicial cooperation.
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
Labels: China, courts, judicial system
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
