On the inauguration day of the judicial year, the presidents of the Courts of Appeal speak.
Justice does not need "reform bulimia" but to "be administered and financed to (...) face ordinary and extraordinary needs such as those imposed by the objectives of the Pnrr".
Objectives which, "in a situation of growing shortage of administrative staff" and "magistrates", are at risk.
This is the premise to the inaugural speech of the judicial year by the president of the
Court of Appeal of Milan
Giuseppe Ondei, who added that his words are not polemical but arise from the "experience" which leads to invoking "stability" of the system compared to the "bulimia" of reforms.
'Judges should not be sanctioned'
Ondei talks about the proceedings initiated by Nordio on Milan robes MILAN "The judge's ruling may be incorrect and reformed in the competent jurisdictions, but the principle is firm that the magistrate can never be sanctioned just for having carried out a normal interpretative activity".
Ondei considered it "necessary to refer", without "wanting to go into the merits", to the decision of the Minister of Justice Nordio to subject three appeal judges to "disciplinary proceedings" for having granted house arrest to the Russian Artem Uss, who escaped on 22 March last.
Milan, critical situation in the immigration sector
The already "critical situation" of the immigration section of the Court of Milan is worsening, "due to the impressive increase in procedures relating to international protection and political asylum", given that "the occurrences in this matter" have also "increased this year by 100%."
This is the alarm raised by the president of the Court of Appeal of Milan Giuseppe Ondei in his report for the inauguration of the Judicial Year.
The time it takes to settle immigration proceedings, also given the constant increase in appeals, "has reached the worrying threshold of three years".
The issue is "very delicate", he added, and "if the legislator does not intervene quickly, for the treatment of these cases, indicated as priorities, we will end up having to divert a large number of magistrates from the exercise of ordinary jurisdiction, that which affects all ordinary citizens, with a consequent significant increase in justice times".
Consider, he further explained, "that in less than 18 months, three councilors have been removed from the Court of Appeal of Milan to apply them to the immigration sections of the Courts of Cagliari, Rome and Turin: I believe that the Court's limit of resilience has been largely overcome and we are justified in saying: enough is enough!".
Rome, in the capital many crimes and few judges
"In Rome, the real crux of criminal trial reform can be succinctly described in the consideration that in the Italian capital there are many crimes, but few judges destined to deal with them".
This is what the President of the Court of Appeal of Rome,
Giuseppe Meliadò
, stated in his report on the occasion of the inauguration of the Judicial Year.
"In the past year - he adds - the civil and criminal procedural reforms have begun to have their effects which, with incessant frenzy, the legislator has launched to stem the length of the trial, following the requests of the European Commission, even if the problem was to be long time on our institutional agenda".
For Meliadò the "civil process, from 1990 to today, has been a continuous construction site of reforms, which has been upset by a reform bulimia, which produces reforms without waiting for the results of those already launched, and in any case by the decisive underestimation of the idea that , in our country, the problem of civil justice is not a problem of procedure, but eminently of resources made available to the jurisdiction and their efficient organization. The latest reform of the civil process was designed with the stated aim of reducing procedural times, but with a series of critical issues which, according to widespread opinion, easily suggest that the aim will be very difficult to achieve, given the same number of personnel and available means. As for the criminal trial, one point is certain with reference to the deflationary effectiveness of the new rules: the Cartabia reform could have been more daring with respect to the real evil".
And again: "it is difficult, however, to hypothesize that in the Court of Appeal of Rome the complex of interventions that have affected the criminal trial are capable of determining in the short term a significant change of pace in the times of definition of the criminal trial, considered overall in the its various degrees and in the various phases of the judgment".
In Lazio "36,567 first degree sentences were issued, of which 17,399 were acquittal sentences, with an overall percentage of 47.5%".
This was stated by the Attorney General of the Court of Appeal of Rome,
Salvatore Vitello
"The overall regulatory capacity of the region's penitentiary institutions is 5,287 places, with an average crowding rate of 119.2 percent and an increase in attendance of 6.4 percent compared to the previous year".
"In this critical condition, the dramatic data on suicides and episodes of self-harm which are registering an increase must also be considered - he adds -. The problem relating to the mental health of offenders and the consequent need for the application of safety measures clashes with insufficiency of the structures compared to the needs. On the penitentiary front, it is observed that in Lazio the growth dynamics of the prisoner population are more intense both with regards to prisoners with sentences of less than 5 years who have grown by 10%, and for those who must serving larger sentences which recorded a growth rate of 7.6%. The number of people detained awaiting trial is decreasing in our region (6.5%)".
'Severe shortage of judges in the Florence court'
16 magistrates at the Florence court are missing.
This was highlighted by the president of the Court of Appeal of Florence
Alessandro Nencini
at the ceremony for the inauguration of the 2024 judicial year. The staff of the judicial office of the Tuscan capital, "divided into five civil sections, one labor section, three criminal , investigating judge/gup office, review court and a court of assizes, should be made up of 99 judges".
Instead, "this critical situation is destined to worsen further by the end of the year until reaching the percentage of unfilled judicial posts of 25.68%", we read in the report.
"The severe shortage of staff, the result of the failure to publish posts or insufficient numbers, combined with the mobility of magistrates without turnover, is a variable that must be taken into account as it is capable of having a negative influence on the achievement of objectives despite the brilliant results of the Pnrr".
The lack of staff coverage "appears serious when compared to the multiple responsibilities that fall on the court of Florence, (in some cases district) whose activity affects a resident population as of 31 December 2020, equal to 998,431 citizens".
Few judges if we consider that "the court of Florence has already been assigned disputes from the court for minors" and is already home to the district anti-mafia directorate, the review court, the company court, the specialized section on immigration matters and the college for prevention measures.
The disposal of backlogged judicial proceedings, which is an objective for the Pnrr, is growing at the court of Florence, both civil and criminal.
This is what emerges from Nencini's report.
In particular, in 2022, 12,558 civil proceedings were defined at the Florence court, compared to the 9,839 registered with a consequent reduction in the backlog.
In the first half of 2023, the positive result was confirmed: 6281 civil cases settled compared to the 6250 registered, with a clearance rate (the measure used at European level to monitor the ability of judicial systems and individual offices to dispose of the proceedings that arise) equal to to 1.0.
Backlog clearance also improves in the criminal sector, again at the Florence court where between the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, the court cleared the backlog with a +17.2% compared to the previous period.
"There was a reduction in pending criminal proceedings of 17.1% with a clear improvement compared to the previous period (-2.7%) and the disaggregated data show a reduction in all areas except the assize court whose pending cases are stable".
"We are on the verge of paralysis, and I don't use rash words. We are on the verge of closing some services."
This is the cry of alarm launched by the president of the Court of Appeal of Florence Alessandro Nencini at the inauguration of the judicial year this morning regarding the resources that would be needed for the proper functioning of the offices.
"We will do everything to cover with volunteering what the institutions do not make available - Nencini also said - But it is a resistance that I don't know to what extent it will be able to continue".
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