Dr Javier Eduardo Velásquez Valenzuela

He/Him

Javier Velásquez is associate professor of Criminal Law and Criminology at the Universidad Católica de Temuco in Chile. He is also the director of the Human Rights Centre at the same University.  His current research interests include; sentencing, legal professional practices, police brutality, the use of non-lethal weapons and human rights violations.

Javier completed his PhD at the SCCJR (University of Glasgow) in 2019, titled “Doing justice: sentencing practices in Scottish sheriff courts”, a study of judge’s sentencing practices in a sample of sheriff courts across Scotland.  On his return to Chile, he took part in a Centro Justicia y Sociedad project where they inquired about the Chilean prosecutors’ practices while investigating sexual offences with child victims. In December 2021, he was awarded a research grant (Fondecyt de Iniciación N°11221052) by the Chilean National Agency for Research and Development. This three-year grant, starting on March 2022, aims to explore the use of pretrial detentions in the Chilean equivalent of sheriff courts in the South of Chile. This research involves non-participant observation of the court hearings and interviewing judges, prosecutors and public defendants in the same vein as his PhD research.  He is presently researching lawyers’ practices within the criminal justice system.

Following the human rights violations committed during the “Estallido Social” in Chile 2019, Javier researched police brutality; in particular, the uses and abuses of non-lethal weapons such as kinetic impact projectiles.  He currently leads a research on the uses of non-lethal weapons by Chilean police in Chile during 2009-2019 at the Human Rights Centre of Universidad Católica de Temuco.

Javier is also a founding member of the Chilean Society of Criminology.  Founded in 2019, SOCHICRIM has become a regional touchstone for criminology in the Global South. As such, Javier is finishing a small project investigating the trajectories of Chilean criminologists, which seeks to trace the origins of the recent Chilean criminological field.

Recent Publications:

• Velásquez, Javier, Fernandez, Alejandro y Cabrera, Natalia (2022). ¿Derecho a mutilar? Por una teoría de las municiones de proyectiles de impacto de energía cinética. En Sanchez, Rocio, Severín, Isabel, Sferrazza, Pietro y Velásquez, Javier. En “Investigación en DDHH y uso de proyectiles de energía cinética”, (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch).
• Velásquez, Javier; Del Fierro, Nicolas y Bravo, Nicolas (2022). Por una reforma del criterio de “Peligro para la seguridad de la sociedad”. En Velásquez, Javier y Fernandez, Alejandro (coordinadores), “Estudios críticos de Derecho Penal y Procesal Penal a 20 años de la reforma procesal penal”, (Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch)
• Velásquez, Javier, Fernandez, Catalina y Reynhout, Scott, (2021) ¿No letales? Un análisis criminológico, criminalístico y jurídico sobre los peligros de los proyectiles de impacto de energía cinética. Política criminal, 16 (33). com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Vol16N32A2.pdf
• Fernandez, Catalina, Velásquez, Javier, (2021). Uso de la Fuerza y Nueva Constitución: La necesidad de un efectivo control civil a la labor policial. En “Nueva Constitución: Una propuesta desde La Araucanía” Editorial Universidad Católica de Temuco)
• Velásquez, Javier; Del Fierro, Nicolas, (2021). ¿Peligro para la seguridad de la sociedad? Una mirada crítica. En Machado, André y Ríos, Rodrigo (coordinadores), “Derecho Procesal Penal. Una mirada a 20 años de reformas en Chile y Brasil”, (Tirant Lo Blanch)
• Carvacho, Pablo; Velásquez, Javier y Ortúzar, Catalina (2020). Las víctimas NNA de delitos sexuales frente al sistema de justicia penal, en “Propuestas para Chile. Concurso Políticas Públicas 2019”.