El Principio de Oportunidad en Sistema de Responsabilidad Penal para Adolescentes en Colombia. Vacíos y Alternativas frente al Trato Diferencial de los Adolescentes en Conflicto con la Ley.

Abstract

The Principle of Opportunity (PO) as an extrajudicial mechanism is an innovative tool that, when applied, guarantees the protection of the rights of minors who commit crimes. In turn, it contributes to the recognition of damages and the resocialization of the offender, as well as to the reparation of the victims. Since the 1970s, international human rights standards have been established that implicitly favor and prioritize the application of PO in juvenile justice processes in order to establish minimum schemes and agreements for the formulation of norms, policies and jurisprudence that regulate and adapt them to the reality of each country. Despite all this, in Colombia the implementation of this figure is very precarious and reveals several deficiencies and limitations in the administration of justice and in the operators in charge of managing it. This paper focuses on this context to analyze how the figure of the principle in question is incorporated in the national legal system. Then, the grounds through which it is activated in the SRPA are developed. This is the result of the incorporation of a series of international standards on juvenile justice systems. In accordance with the above, some shortcomings in the system in the city of Bogotá are evidenced, as an example in the application of the PO in the country.