Determinacion judicial de la pena, motivacion y su control en el Derecho penal de adolescentes chileno

Abstract

This article raises the question of the duty to provide justification for judgments in the field of juvenile criminal responsibility according to the new system established by Law N° 20.084. The article tries to offer a dogmatic point of view regarding the issues related to the justification for convicting judgments passed under the provisions of Law N° 20.084, in order to overcome currently existing legal opinion (especially in case law) which sustains that the process of determination of the sentence escapes dogmatic control because it is a subject that purportedly the system entrusts to the court's discretion. The article also presents an exegesis of the system of determination of the sentence and of the criteria used to govern this system. Finally, based on the regulation of the recourse of nullity, possible measures to mitigate the errors that judgments may contain regarding the determination of the sentence in juvenile law are formulated.