Government spokesperson Gonzalo Arenas defended the legality of the 56 sentence reductions granted to people convicted of sex offenses against minors during President José Antonio Kast's administration, according to CNN Chile. Arenas is undersecretary of the General Secretariat of Government (Segegob).
The breakdown of cases comes from the outlet Interferencia: 27 decrees concern people convicted of sexual abuse of minors and 29 concern people convicted of rape.
Arenas described the report as "quite ill-intentioned". In his view, the coverage assumes that the executive branch wanted to pardon people who committed sexual abuse.
The spokesperson maintained that this is a procedure established by law and that the authorities do not act arbitrarily. "If people meet the criteria established by law and are approved, the decision is made by the sentence reduction commissions," he said.
According to Arenas, the executive branch "cannot do much more than process those requests". He added that the courts have established this in cases where that was not done. He did not specify which rulings or how many.
"We are not talking about whether we like something or not, but about something established by law. It is a right," he said. He also stated that the government "complies with the regulations".
The spokesperson's central argument concerns a 2022 reform. Arenas explained that the legal amendment specifically prohibited sentence reductions for sex offenses. According to him, none of the decrees concerns offenses committed after that reform.
On that basis, Arenas concluded that the Ministry of Justice "has strictly fulfilled its legal obligation". He also noted that the minister of Justice had already addressed the issue. The CNN Chile report does not specify which commissions approved each case or the dates of the decrees.
