Well, see, we've been trying to deal with a number of issues. There are technical issues, right? We've been talking to them about what the model of management of investigation is. We've adapted the major case management model of the RCMP, and we asked how a model like that, which is designed to avoid tunnel vision, actually applies in Latin America, where the investigators are really under the direction of the prosecutor. Really, you have the prosecutor leading the case, the case prosecutor, who is actually the top of the pyramid. If you have an investigator, the case manager, and the file organizer, two out of the three of them will be actually connected to the prosecutors, and the third will be an investigator. If they're using that model, you have to ask how they would adapt it within the country. That's what we've been trying to do.
Under the old system, of course, the investigations were done, and they reported to an investigating judge. Now, of course, you have the prosecutors who are responsible for that. But we have to actually ask them, “How do you do this work?” That's what we've been putting all this energy on. There's a couple of pieces to it. There's a technical piece. How do you create the team? What are the steps? How often do you meet? How do you make this work? What kind of evidence do you get in? The second piece is a cultural piece. Historically, there has been a lack of respect for prosecutors. They're higher up in the food chain than police and so when they would do this they would just tell the investigator to do this, do this, do this. Of course, we're saying no, they have to work as a team. So there are cultural issues that have to be dealt with.
The other issue we've been dealing with within the course of our work is that there's a mindset problem. The mindset problem deals with the fact that, under the inquisitorial system, people were presumed guilty until proven innocent. They now have to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Well, the whole question of how you approach things and how you approach the evidence and how you deal with getting the evidence together and presenting it and how you then do cross-examination are all very foreign to most people in those systems. So we're trying to say, “Look, we have to address that issue. We have to address the issue of the mindset that you need around conducting proper investigations”.
We find that if we try to just teach the technical skills within the context of a cultural box that is not used to thinking the way we think, which we just assume, we end up with dysfunction. They end up doing what we call procedural justice, where all they're trying to do is to tick off the boxes, and then they have enough in there supposedly to convict. That's part of the challenge of what we're trying to address and what we're hoping to address with this work with ATIC.