A delegation from the Chilean Gendarmerie, headed by the national director Christian Alveal Gutiérrez and the head of intelligence, Colonel Renán Sepúlveda, along with the EL PAcCTO team, have held a meeting that has resulted in important advances in the fight against Transnational Organised Crime (TOC). The meeting was also attended by Italian expert Marco Pieri, head of the High Security Section of Prison Circuits with the Italian Department of Penitentiary Administration.

Other issues addressed included the bill to include new criminal elements and crimes in the Criminal Code, such as “criminal association”, which provides for separate prison management for members of criminal organisations.

The meeting also studied the formulation of an Anticorruption Plan in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, as well as the formation of two new departments: the Criminal Investigation Department -a partnership between the Public Ministry and the police responsible for investigating crime in the prison environment- and the Penitentiary Intelligence Department, which will search and analyse the data provided through the tactical information coming from the technical units. Through these new areas, the Gendarmerie has already succeeded in identifying a significant number of criminal gang leaders.

Finally, EL PAcCTO will continue to support this important institutional and operational strengthening process for the Chilean Gendarmerie in the light of attempts to penetrate Transnational Organised Crime in the prison system, in particular collaborating in the following issues:

• Supporting a revision to the regulation of the extreme security regime in the Penitentiary Establishments Regulations, so that differentiated prison circuits may be instituted to ensure that TOC leaders cannot communicate with each other and with the outside world.
• Supporting the constitution and formation of a multidisciplinary team that has the tools and skills to conduct effective profiling of transnational organised crime leaders and to evaluate when the circuit can be changed.
• Supporting the development of a training curriculum for personnel specially dedicated to managing Organised Criminal Groups, on the model of the Italian Mobile Operational Group (the body specialising in prison policy for managing persons deprived of liberty who belong to organised criminal groups.