Criminal justice reform, conviction without trial and the role of the criminal judge in Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses the role of criminal judges in mechanisms of conviction without trial that have spread in recent decades in Latin America, in the context of criminal justice reforms towards an adversarial model. These mechanisms in the region are the result of a complex translation of plea bargaining from USA legal tradition which included adaptations and innovations. One of those is a strongly active and interventionist role for the criminal judge in ‘law in books’. However, through empirical research in the Province of Santa Fe (Argentina), this article shows how a judicial practice of routine and fast ‘homologation’ of agreements is effectively structured in ‘law in action’. This role implies a sort of deresponsibilisation in relation to the exercise of the power to punish, in stark contrast with the inquisitorial model, precisely in a warm climate of strong public distrust and criticism of state crime control institutions.