Constitution and Criminal Regression. Pre-Trial Detention

Within the Rule of Law, the relationship between the constitutional order and the penal system is expressed in the protection of the fundamental rights of citizens and their primary material interests. However, there are critical points between the demands of liberal constitutionalism and the requirements of the criminal order. Such is the case of the precautionary measures in criminal procedure, provided for by the Constitution and detailed by the secondary provisions of criminal prosecution, a matter contemplated in the extensive procedural reform that advanced in Latin America at the end of the twentieth century and continues in the twenty-first. In the following pages I will deal directly with what the Mexican constitutional norm calls informal pretrial detention.