4 13. Other purposes are excluded; even though they may be plausible in themselves and concern State obligations, but they do not figure in the strict – and restricted – nature of the precautionary procedural measure. They include, for example, general crime prevention or social training; even though crime is prevented and society considers that the public powers provide collective security and reduce impunity. The State can and must use different means to deal with these and other aspects of combating crime. Therefore, the Court’s case law has rejected provisions that exclude the liberty of the accused in general, based only on the offense that has been committed without respecting the needs of the specific case. This entails a form of legislative “prejudice” with regard to the pertinence of liberty or prison that should be decided in each case – not generically – in keeping with the proven circumstances of each case, considering the presence of the accused at the trial and the normal evolution of the trial. 14. The delicate, difficult, compromising public determination to deprive an individual identified as a “possible or probable” author of a “possible or probable” offense of his liberty, calls for great care in proving the punishable act and linking the accused to it. I am not saying that there must be a firm conviction – which is a requirement for handing down a conviction. Nevertheless the existence of a punishable fact must be sufficiently authenticated (under the denomination provided for by each national system), on condition that it does not exclude constituent elements of the offense that convert admissible conduct into punishable conduct; and the probable participation of the subject in this punishable fact must be reasonably established. These are crucial, essential guarantees, if we do not want to subject liberty to the whim of a tyrannical legislator or an arbitrary enforcer. The reduction of the probative requirements in either extreme – the act and the probable responsibility – is an affront to liberty and a constraint on justice. It is unreasonable to adduce that all will be decided at the hour of judgment, perhaps a long time after the start of the trial and after weeks, months or years of irreparable deprivation of liberty. It is essential that the rights of the individual – that extend to the rights and guarantees of all society – are well protected from the moment in which the power of the State takes away the liberty of the citizen. 15. The foregoing gives rise to other consequences, which also embody principles concerning preventive detention. They include its provisional and limited nature, restricted by both time and the way it is executed. It is inadmissible to lengthen preventive detention when the conditions for imposing it have ceased or when the time needed for a reasonable investigation, conducted seriously and effectively, proves the existence of the offense and the criminal responsibility and thus allows the proceedings to be concluded and a judgment delivered. Sergio García Ramírez Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary