Upcoming seminars
18/03/2026 at 1 pm
Daniel Mejía
(Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
"On the Tension Between Due Process Protection and Public Safety: The Case of an Extensive Procedural Reform in Colombia"
Abstract: We study how large procedural reforms reshape deterrence by tracing equilibrium adjustments across multiple margins of the criminal justice system. Using the staggered rollout of Colombia’s comprehensive adversarial criminal procedure reform in a civil-law setting (2005-2008), we estimate both intended administrative effects and unintended effects on enforcement and crime. The reform aimed to strengthen due process protections, reduce reliance on pretrial detention, accelerate case processing, and expand early termination mechanisms. We find that it achieved most of the objectives: pretrial detention declined by 13-28%, procedural duration fell by 19%, settlements increased by 41-65%, and adjudication rose substantially. At the same time, the reform reduced enforcement activity and case progression: arrest rates fell by 39% and clearance rates by 16-25%. Consistent with a reduction in the certainty component of deterrence, crime increased after implementation; property crime by 29% and violent crime by 15%. These findings highlight a key implication of adversarial procedural redesign: reforms that improve internal efficiency can alter enforcement and charging behavior in ways that affect public safety. More broadly, they underscore the importance of evaluating procedural reforms as bundled institutional changes and measuring their effects along the full case-processing pipeline, from complaint to case resolution, rather than inferring mechanisms from crime outcomes alone.
How to attend the seminar:
The seminar will be on-site in room Módulo 1-301 and streamed.
To receive the seminar invitation with the streaming link, please send an email to teoriahistoriauam@gmail.com
Organisers: Jorge García Hombrados, Ana Nuevo Chiquero, Eugenio Zucchelli and Damian Pierri