The ex turpi causa principle in Hounga and Servier

In Hounga v Allen the majority of the Supreme Court employed a test for the application of the ex turpi causa defence involving the balancing of public policy arguments for and against allowing the defence. Although this has attracted some early academic support, this note will argue it is inconsistent with authority and principle. The later decision in Servier v Apotex does not address the Hounga decision directly but strongly endorses a more conservative approach to the ex turpi causa principle. The resulting tension between these two Supreme Court decisions is likely further to destabilise the law in this area. This note advances arguments in favour of the Servier approach, summarises both decisions in terms of their consistency with authority and considers the ways in which Servier may have limited the effects of Hounga.     

Crafting public security: demilitarisation,penal state reform and security policy-making in post-authoritarian Chile

ABSTRACT

Here I dissect the institutionalisation of ‘citizen security’ as a category and sector of public policy in post-authoritarian Chile. Deploying a Bourdieusian field theory approach and questioning narratives of security policies as responses to criminality or adaptations to democratic values, I argue that the construction of a new security policy sector – with a new consensus (distinct from that of National Security), with reformed police and courts in its core, leaving aside the military and extending beyond traditional agencies – derives from (i) struggles over policing and criminal justice reforms, (ii) tensions between the military and democratic authorities in democracy and (iii) performative integrations of the new policy components. These mechanisms explain the evolution of the security problem and the progressive aggregation of bureaucratic agencies and methods to the ‘public security policy’ – policing, judiciary, urban design, prisons and prevention plans. I close discussing alternative accounts of institutional variations in security governance in the region.