ABSTRACT
The problem of corruption in Peru is endemic. Since 2000, four democratically elected presidents have been imprisoned or put under investigation for corruption. Even more alarming are survey findings that one out of four Peruvians admit to having bribed a public servant, and half of the population would vote for a local government candidate who might steal from the national budget so long as he or she invests in infrastructure. In an attempt to curb the problem of corruption, the justice system has stepped up through the creation of a specialized anticorruption subsystem to review the most complex corruption cases, as well as the reform of the Criminal Procedure Code, which replaced the old written inquisitorial system with an oral, less bureaucratic one based on adversarial models. While these reforms promised greater justice and efficiency in the judicial handling of corruption cases, this chapter argues that justice itself may have been sacrificed in pursuit of efficiency. In particular, this chapter explores how the new Criminal Procedure Code encourages the premature dismissal of corruption cases by the public prosecutor.
