Negligence offences in Colombia: when an accident is a crime

Juan Antonio Matiz Monroy — Lawyer, Universidad de los Andes · Specialist in Criminal Law, Universidad Sergio Arboleda · Professional licence 294.746 (C.S.J.)

Bogotá D.C. · Published: September 2026 · Reading time: 9 min

There was a crash. Or an operation that ended badly. Or something gave way on a building site and someone was underneath.

You did not want it to happen. That is true, and it was probably the first thing you said.

Criminal law does not start there. It does not ask whether you wanted it. It asks whether you took the care that activity required, and whether the harm came out of that lack of care.

That difference alone explains almost everything that follows.

01. Negligence offenses in Colombia: what people usually believe

“If I did not mean it, it is not a crime.” It is the most repeated sentence, and the most mistaken.

The Criminal Code punishes two different things. One is wanting the harm. The other is not having taken care where care was owed. That second one has a name of its own: the negligence offence.

Driving, operating or building are not prohibited. They are permitted under conditions. The word “fault” here does not mean remorse or bad faith. It names the breach of those conditions.

There is a second belief, quieter. “It was an accident, so there is nothing to be done.” Not that either. Because the matter does not turn on intent, it is decided by technical evidence. And that evidence is won or lost early.

02. The three requirements of negligence

Article 23 of the Criminal Code defines it thus: “Conduct is negligent where the defined result is the product of a breach of the objective duty of care and the agent ought to have foreseen it because it was foreseeable, or, having foreseen it, trusted that he could avoid it.”

In plain words: three things are needed, and all three at once.

First, the duty of care of that activity. It is not in the Criminal Code. It is outside: in the traffic regulations, in the guidelines of the medical specialty, in the site protocol. It is like the manual of a machine. The Code does not write it, but it takes it as read.

Second, that the harm was foreseeable. Foreseeable is not the same as guessable. It is what a prudent person, in that position and in that trade, would have contemplated as possible.

Third, that the harm came out of that lack of care. This is the link. It is not enough that you broke a rule and that someone was also injured. It has to be shown that the second is the realisation of the first.

The third is the one that decides most cases, and the one most often forgotten.

One example joins all three. You cross on a red light and, at that instant, someone steps into the road from behind a stationary bus. There is a breach, there is a death and there is grief. But if the reconstruction shows that the collision would have happened just the same on a green light, the third requirement is missing. The breach existed; it was not the breach that produced the result.

03. The two ways of failing to take care

The same article 23 describes two ways of getting there.

In one, you saw the risk and trusted you could get around it. You overtook on a bend because you had always made it back in time. That is conscious negligence.

In the other, you did not even think of it, and you should have. You did not check what your trade requires you to check, and so you did not see what was in plain sight. That is unconscious negligence.

Both are negligence. The limit lies beyond: if you accepted that the result would happen and were indifferent to it, the argument is no longer about negligence.

The two forms lead to the same offence and the same sentencing range. What changes is the evidentiary argument. In one, what is argued is what you saw and what you trusted. In the other, what you should have verified and did not.

04. How this looks in a road accident, a medical act and a building site

The scheme is the same. What changes is the manual.

On the road the duty is written and public: a speed, a right of way, a traffic light, a prohibited manoeuvre. If there is a death, the offence is negligent homicide under article 109. If there are injuries, article 120. Two circumstances weigh more than the rest, and it is worth seeing them in figures.

In the medical act the duty is called lex artis: the accepted standard of the specialty, that is, what a competent professional would have done in those conditions, with those resources and that information. It does not require getting it right. It requires having done what was called for. An adverse outcome, by itself, is not an offence. But a doctor can be convicted if it is proved that they fell short of the standard and that the death or the injury came out of that failure.

That standard is not assumed: it is reconstructed. It is built from the complete clinical record, from the practice guidelines of the specialty and from the opinion of a peer in the same discipline. That is why the expert report comes early and why it weighs so much.

On a building site the duty is in the protocol, in the technical standard and in the safe practice of the trade. Here a prior question appears that decides many cases: who was responsible for that part. No one answers for a lack of care it was not in their hands to avoid.

Where a contractor, a site supervisor and a worker are involved, the file usually starts with the organisation chart and the contract. Who gave the order, who supervised and who was to verify are not the same person, and each one’s duty is measured separately.

05. When there is no negligence offence

The scheme is useful above all for what it leaves out.

There is none where no care was owed and breached. A bad outcome with everything done to the standard is a misfortune, not an offence.

There is none where there was no death and no injury. A traffic fine or a professional reprimand may remain, but this chapter of the Code does not come in.

There is none where the harm came from another cause. If the result is explained by the exclusive conduct of the person affected, or by an independent event, the link breaks. If the fault was shared, yours does not disappear, although it weighs in the analysis.

And there is none where the law did not provide that form for that offence. Article 21 is blunt: negligence “is punishable only in the cases expressly indicated by law”. In theft, fraud or money laundering there is no negligent form.

The offences that do admit the negligent form

They are few and they are named one by one.

In life and personal integrity there are negligent homicide (article 109), negligent injury (article 120) and negligent injury to the foetus (article 126). These account for almost all the cases.

Beyond that there are four pockets. Certain environmental offences, whose penalties are reduced by up to half where the conduct is negligent (article 339, replaced by Law 2111 of 2021). Some offences of common danger, with a reduction of between one third and one half and only “in the cases where that is possible according to their structural configuration” (article 360). Negligent misappropriation by a public servant who allows property in their custody to be mislaid, lost or damaged (article 400). And the escape of a detainee through the fault of whoever was to guard them (article 450).

06. What can happen next

It is not the subject of this piece, but it is worth knowing what ground your case falls on.

They do not all go the same way. Negligent homicide follows the ordinary procedure. Negligent injury under article 120 is on the list in article 534 of the Criminal Procedure Code and goes by the special abbreviated procedure, which is shorter and has fewer hearings.

Nor are they set in motion by the same person. Negligent homicide is investigated of the authorities’ own motion: the prosecution acts without anyone asking. Negligent injury requires a querella, that is, that the injured person ask for it (article 74). And that querella lapses: article 73 gives six months from the conduct, not from the day the events were understood. In cases of arrest in flagrante it is not needed.

In the conduct that goes by the abbreviated route there is also a little-known lever. The criminal action can be converted from public to private (articles 550 and 551), and then the person affected drives the case as a private prosecutor, with the rights they already had and with the burden that entails.

Whichever the route, the evidence arrives before you do. Whatever can be gathered is gathered: sketch plans, skid marks, the final position of the vehicles, the clinical record, the site log, video. That evidence is technical and it degrades within days.

Three fronts also run without resolving one another: the criminal, the civil claim for damages and the disciplinary or administrative. Progress in one does not close the others, and losing in one does not convict in the rest.

And there is a door of its own. Article 78A of the Criminal Procedure Code, introduced by Law 2477 of 2025, extinguishes the criminal action through full redress of the harm. It applies to negligent homicide and negligent injury where none of the aggravating circumstances in articles 110 and 121 is present. The redress is calculated on an expert’s valuation of the loss, unless there is agreement or the injured party states that they have been compensated. If one person makes redress, the effect covers all the accused. The expert report may be objected to by both sides. And it does not lie in respect of anyone who obtained the same decision in the previous five years.

The stages of each procedure are explained separately.

07. The first hours

Almost everything that later proves expensive is decided in the first hours.

Do not leave the scene. Leaving without just cause is not mere clumsiness: it increases the sentence by between one half and double (article 110, num. 2), and article 121 carries that circumstance across to negligent injury.

Give assistance. Failing to help someone left in grave danger can be an offence in itself: failure to render aid, article 131. Fleeing and staying without doing anything are not the same conduct, and neither suits you.

Do not tidy the scene. Move only what is indispensable to attend to someone. What looks to you like disorder is, in the file, the evidence.

Do not build a version with anyone before knowing what happened. An improvised explanation later becomes a contradiction.

Do not sign agreements or accept figures that night. Making redress can help you a great deal, but the when and the how change the effect.

And ask for what is lost on its own: the video that gets overwritten, the equipment log, the complete clinical record, the details of whoever saw what happened.

08. Conclusions

A negligence offence is not defined by intent, but by what is proved. Article 23 requires three things at once. A duty of care set outside the Code, foreseeable harm and a link between the lack of care and the result. The link decides most cases: it must be the breach that produced the result.

Both sides argue over that same evidence, and the route depends on the result. Negligent homicide is investigated of the authorities’ own motion; negligent injury requires a querella within six months of the conduct. Redress extinguishes the action through article 78A, on an expert’s valuation that both sides may object to. That is why the first hours weigh so much: staying and helping on one side, filing the querella and preserving evidence on the other.

In the initial consultation we review which duty governed the activity, what evidence exists and which procedural route applies. Whether you took part or were affected, we define what to preserve and what to ask for from the outset. On the basis of that diagnosis, the firm can take on the criminal defence or the victim representation in the proceeding.

Legal and bibliographic references

Forms of liability and negligence. L. 599/2000, Código Penal, arts. 21 y 23.

Negligence offences and aggravating circumstances. C.P., arts. 109 y 110 —este último modificado por el art. 1 de la L. 1326/2009 y adicionado por el art. 1 de la L. 1696/2013—, 120 y 121, 126, 131, 339 —sustituido por el art. 1 de la L. 2111/2021—, 360, 400 y 450 —modificado por el art. 10 de la L. 733/2002—. Penas aumentadas por el art. 14 de la L. 890/2004.

Procedure. L. 906/2004, Código de Procedimiento Penal, arts. 73 y 74 —modificados por los arts. 4 de la L. 1826/2017 y 22 de la L. 2197/2022—, 78A —adicionado por el art. 4 de la L. 2477/2025—, 534 —modificado por el art. 23 de la L. 2197/2022—, 550 —modificado por el art. 5 de la L. 1959/2019— y 551 —adicionado por el art. 29 de la L. 1826/2017—.