On 13 September of 2013, DPLF and the Legal Defense Institute (Instituto de Defensa Legal) (IDL), in conjunction with the General Director of Public Defense and Access to Justice of the Justice and Human Rights Ministry of Peru, held an event for 100 public defenders from Lima. Here, they presented the reports  Insufficient Judicial Independence, distorted pre-trial detention: The Cases of Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru (a DPLF publication) and Pre-Trial Detention in Peru: Precautionary Measure or Anticipatory Sentence? (an IDL publication). Luis Pásara, DPLF Senior Fellow and Gabriel Chávez-Tarfur, coordinator of pre-trial justice program in IDL, shared with the audience the main findings of both researchers.  Later, the public defenders heads of the districts of Lima reviewed the publications and commented on the difficulties faced in exercising an effective criminal defense with respect to pre-trial detention, especially because “equality of arms” between their institution and the Attorney General does not operate as such in practice.

The forum’s topic was particularly relevant given the recent adoption of Law 30076, which applied the Criminal Procedures Code’s rules on pre-trial detention at a national level, while the rest of its dispositions remained applicable to only three of the country’s provinces. This has resulted in the application of pre-trial detention in an adversarial process (while the rest of the criminal process is still inquisitorial) where public defense must take a more active role.