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🇨🇱 Chile /Conflict & Security

Chilean Security Reform Criticized for Lacking Intelligence Focus

From BioBioChile · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • A proposed constitutional reform in Chile aims to enshrine public safety as a state duty and create a new state of exception.
  • Critics, including an expert from the UNAB's Observatory on Organized Crime, argue some changes are unnecessary or dangerous, particularly the lack of focus on intelligence.
  • The reform has been reduced from 11 to 7 points due to political pressure, removing measures like the loss of state benefits for organized crime convicts.

Chile's government is pushing a constitutional reform focused on public security, a move that has drawn criticism even from within the ruling coalition. The project seeks to establish public safety as a constitutional duty and introduce a fifth state of exception, alongside other measures like differentiated prison regimes.

the reality in terms of security requires consensus and different opinions.

— Pablo UrquizarUrquizar discusses the need for broad agreement and varied viewpoints in addressing security issues.

However, political pressures have led to a significant reduction in the reform's scope, trimming it from 11 to 7 points. Notably, provisions that would have stripped convicted organized crime offenders of state benefits have been removed, signaling a compromise that some argue weakens the original intent.

Pablo Urquizar, coordinator of the Observatory on Organized Crime and Terrorism at Universidad Andrés Bello, acknowledges some positive aspects, such as prioritizing citizen concerns. Yet, he warns that certain proposed changes are "unnecessary and in some aspects dangerous." Urquizar questions the need to alter constitutional foundations, pointing out that the constitution already designates security as a state duty.

when criminal organizations 'murder, kidnap, extort, they do not distinguish in their victims the political color they have'.

— Pablo UrquizarUrquizar highlights the indiscriminate nature of criminal actions.

He further criticizes the proposed new state of exception, deeming it redundant given the existing state of emergency, which has been in place for over four years in the southern macrozone to combat organized crime. Urquizar's primary concern is the reform's "great failing": the absence of a strong intelligence component. "Without intelligence, police and armed forces operate blindly," he stated, emphasizing that effective security requires consensus and diverse perspectives, not polarization.

Without intelligence, police and armed forces operate blindly.

— Pablo UrquizarUrquizar points to the critical lack of intelligence in the proposed security reform.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by BioBioChile in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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