Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in lower criminal courts and in one unit of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Santiago, Chile, I explore the way in which criminal offenses considered flagrant are treated by the Chilean criminal justice system. Citing the literature on legal technicalities, I describe how flagrant criminal offenses are constructed through practices that make it possible for the actors involved to avoid directly referring to the alleged facts. From their identification on the streets by police officers to their reassignment to a different unit of the Public Prosecutor's Office or their adjudication at a criminal court, flagrant criminal offenses are defined by a specific way of approaching the alleged facts, which is translated into specific organizational and documentary practices. The role of these practices contrasts with the apparently marginal role that the detention in flagrante delicto plays in the mechanics of criminal law. As a technicality, the flagrant character of a criminal offense conveys certain epistemological assumptions about how to determine what happened and what exactly constitutes the criminal offense. More specifically, it conveys assumptions about what cannot, for the moment, be known and that can, therefore, be ignored throughout the bureaucratic and judicial process.

中文翻译：

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如何不必知道：智利圣地亚哥的法律技术细节和公然刑事犯罪

利用在智利圣地亚哥的下级刑事法院和公共检察官办公室的一个单位收集的人种学数据，我探讨了智利刑事司法系统处理被认为公然的刑事犯罪的方式。我引用了有关法律技术性的文献，描述了公然的刑事犯罪是如何通过使相关行为者避免直接提及所指控的事实成为可能的做法来构建的。从警察在街上辨认他们到他们被重新分配到检察官办公室的不同单位或他们在刑事法院的判决，公然的刑事犯罪是通过处理所指控事实的特定方式来定义的，这种方式被转化为特定的组织和纪录片实践。这些做法的作用与现行拘留在刑法机制中所起的明显边缘作用形成鲜明对比。作为一种技术性，刑事犯罪的公然性质传达了某些关于如何确定发生了什么以及究竟是什么构成刑事犯罪的认识论假设。更具体地说，它传达了关于目前无法知道的假设，因此在整个官僚和司法程序中可以忽略这些假设。