We invite you to read the opinion column written by our Senior Associate in the Criminal Law Group, Daniela Castillo, who addresses the bill seeking to strengthen the response to particularly serious crimes and lower the age of criminal responsibility for adolescents.
The involvement of adolescents in violent crimes requires a serious state response. The severity of crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, rape resulting in homicide, or attacks against police officers or Gendarmería cannot be ignored. Nor can the existence of young people with repeated offending patterns that require effective intervention.
From this perspective, Bill No. 15,589-07, currently under second constitutional review before the Senate, seeks to strengthen the response to particularly serious crimes. Its discussion has included lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 13 and applying the adult criminal justice regime to 16- and 17-year-old adolescents who are repeat offenders or involved in serious crimes. With respect to the latter alternative, the Government withdrew the transfer mechanism that would have allowed them to be tried as adults.
The concern is legitimate. However, lowering the age from 14 to 13 does not appear to be appropriate. Juvenile criminal justice is not a milder version of the adult system, but rather a special regime for individuals who are still developing. These are minors at an early stage of their growth, which calls for prioritizing preventive responses over earlier criminal intervention.
According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office report Juvenile Criminal Responsibility in Chile, published in July this year, the majority of juvenile offenders are 16- and 17-year-olds, confirming that criminal involvement increases toward the end of adolescence. Extending the criminal justice system to younger ages does not address the predominant profile of the phenomenon.
The report also confirms that this is a concentrated phenomenon. Ten percent of offenders account for 43% of crimes, while only 2.4% of those studied display a persistent offending trajectory and account for 13.4% of the offenses. Most adolescents show low-intensity offending patterns and early desistance.
Lowering the age also entails a risk expressly warned about by the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children’s Rights in September 2025: criminal organizations may respond by recruiting even younger children to use them in the commission of crimes. This concern is supported by the Public Prosecutor’s Office report, which reveals that nearly one in five cases involves the joint participation of adolescents and adults, and that this co-participation has shifted toward offenses associated with organized crime, particularly drug- and weapons-related crimes.
These figures suggest that the State’s response should not focus on expanding punitive intervention against children and adolescents, but rather on more rigorously prosecuting those who recruit and instrumentalize them, specifically sanctioning such conduct, and strengthening early, targeted prevention addressing risk factors such as school dropout, drug use, and access to weapons.
The system’s capacity must also be taken into account. The bill seeks to amend the rules governing sentencing in order to prioritize placement in closed detention facilities, restricting special supervised release for sentences of three years or more. In this regard, on August 12, before the Senate’s Constitution Committee, the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children’s Rights projected a significant increase in the number of adolescents subject to custodial regimes under the proposed legislation, reporting that “deprivation of liberty rates would increase from 209 adolescents to 804 in closed detention and from 551 to 701 in partial detention.”
If the reform results in greater actual enforcement of custodial sentences without ensuring adequate infrastructure, specialization, and effective programs, tougher measures could undermine rehabilitation and, consequently, the public security that the reform seeks to strengthen.
Column written by:
Daniela Castillo | Criminal Litigation Group Senior Associate | dcastillo@az.cl
