Confessions to the police in the Chilean Criminal Procedure

Abstract

The article is a description and a critic of the legal regulation on police interrogation in the Chilean Criminal Procedural Code. In addition, it describes the practices developed to rein­state the use of confessions in criminal procedure after a period in which the police avoided the interrogations. There is also a review of the decisions of the Chilean Supreme Court about the admissibility of confession in criminal trials. Finally, the article discusses the need for a legal reform oriented to clarify the rules about police interrogation, the control of confession admissi­bility and its presentation on trial, all with the aim to contribute to a better police work and to a better judicial control over confession’s reliability.