The judge dean of Barcelona, ??Cristina Ferrando, makes an urgent appeal: the criminal courts are overwhelmed and cannot absorb the current criminal activity. After the pandemic, all crimes have increased in the city and the justice system does not have the capacity to take them on. The situation is borderline. Speedy trials are held a year after the crime is committed, when the time limit should be 15 days, and minor crimes, mostly theft, are tried almost a year later, shortly before the statute of limitations. “In Barcelona there is no more crime than in other European cities, but there is an under-funding of the courts”, lamented the judge dean yesterday in a meeting with journalists.
The person in charge of the organization of the Barcelona courts calculates that the traffic jam is so great that the creation of six new courts is urgently needed to be able to take on the cases that are taking place. His proposal envisages the creation of four criminal courts, which deal with less serious crimes, which carry prison sentences of less than five years, such as robberies with violence or with intimidation, injuries, positive blood alcohol levels and cases of domestic violence . And it also claims two additional enforcement courts to enforce the sentences that are handed down.
This request is added to the claim to consolidate a second court for minor crimes (old misdemeanors) to take on the growing phenomenon of theft. In fact, in one of the courts, trials are held very shortly before one year has passed since the crime was committed and is considered time-barred. The proposal for the creation of new bodies has been raised to the Ministry of Justice, which is the administration that must provide the budget allocation, the General Council of the Judiciary, which allocates the judges, and the Generalitat, which appoints the officials
The numbers bear out the seriousness of the issue regarding speedy trials. In 2022, 7,242 criminal trials were reported in Barcelona and 5,969 could be held. The rest, 1,273, remain accumulated pending prosecution next year. In this way, the traffic jam is created. On the other hand, in Madrid, 5,490 trials were reported and 5,603 were held; therefore, pending cases from the previous year could also be absorbed. These data show that the mechanism from investigating the fact until it is sent to trial works, since the trials are pointed out, but they show that there is a lack of organs to judge them and to enforce the sentence. “In Barcelona we have a good gear, but there is a funnel. We don’t have enough courts”, says the judge dean. “We have a fight that we cannot absorb. The workload of these courts is 60% higher than recommended by the CGPJ”, adds Cristina Ferrando.
There are currently four criminal courts. Two on a consolidated basis and two more reinforcements that hold a minimum of 36 trials each day and a maximum of 40, from Monday to Friday. For the two provisional courts, there are four judges assigned to reinforce territorial assignment, initially planned to fill vacancies, but which were assigned exclusively to the holding of speedy trials to deal with saturation. “It’s a temporary solution, a patch”, warns Ferrando.
At the same time, the judge dean asks for confidence in justice to deal with the phenomenon of multiple recidivism and warns that it is necessary to differentiate those who accumulate many arrests from those who record repeated convictions. “A multi-recidivist is not the same as a multi-detainee. Justice needs evidence to convict, not just suspicions.”
