8 of the body of provisions for the protection of all persons under any form of detention or imprisonment, in 1988, sets forth: “A detained person suspected of or charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent and shall be treated as such until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.” 34. Of course, I am aware of the obstacles to full application of this presumption or principle. They are, undoubtedly, the often debated precautionary measures in the criminal proceeding, first and foremost preventive incarceration, to which there have always been objections. Another obstacle is the very fact that the criminal procedure is based on the opposite idea: reasonable evidence of criminality, probable criminal liability, the existence of data that provide grounds to believe that a given individual participated in a specific criminal act, and so forth. 35. Nevertheless, this presumption or this principle is an extremely valuable reference for the construction of the proceeding, to address doubts that may arise during the proceeding, to recover guarantees and to reduce disproportionate interference. The nature and outcome of the procedural acts and of the proceeding as a whole are very different when the defendant is treated “as if he were guilty,” which is a trait of the inquisitorial system, and when he is treated “as if he were innocent,” which is a trait of the accusatory one. Ultimately, what the presumption or principle of innocence seeks is to exclude prejudice –advanced, general and condemnatory judgment against the defendant, without being based on the evidence of the facts and of the liability- and to avoid advanced punishment based on vague appearances. VIII. Arbitrary detention 36. The case that this Opinion refers to shows, once again, the great flaw at the outset of the proceeding, or at least the one that most often and overwhelmingly victimizes the defendant –the one “presumed innocent”- and weighs on the rest of the data of the prosecution by the State: arbitrary detention. It is not easy, now, to find legal standards that do not address the lawfulness of this very significant, delicate, and devastating measure. Efforts have been made to surround it with conditions: that detention must be based on the law, that it must be conducted by a competent authority, that it must be ordered by a judicial authority, that it must be recorded in writing, that the detainee must be presented. This catalogue of good intent, duly reflected in the fundamental laws, collides with frequent practice. One bad day two agents detain a person driving his car down a city street. They say that he is required for “migration control.” They take him, without informing him about his rights or of the charges against him, to a prison six hundred miles away from where he was detained. He remains there twenty-eight months. Ultimately, his trial will be discontinued, if only provisionally. 37. The Inter-American Court’s jurisprudence also addresses this problem. Most, if not all cases of extra-legal execution, torture, forced disappearance, irregular proceedings, etcetera, etcetera, were preceded by a detention in which there was not even a remote respect for conditions that legitimize detention and that enable a distinction between an action of the State based on the Constitution and the kidnapping of a citizen, committed by “law enforcement” agents who impose their personal will on the general will reflected in the legal principle. 38. Rather than being unheard of, cases in which there was an arbitrary detention seem to be the majority –or at least they are very numerous and evident. From then on, the proceeding can become a labyrinth that is full of traps, and which certainly is not in accordance with the idea of a legal proceeding –an “ethical,” in addition to juridical, idea-, associated with the Rule of Law and which is, in fact, one of its most