25 March 2008

A matter of justice

I’m publishing an interview I gave to the foreign press on the topic of justice.


If you were able to become the Minister of Justice, how would you resolve the many problems of Justice in Italy? The trials that last too long, the prisons that are too few, and the certainty of the penalty?
Antonio Di Pietro: Justice needs ordinary and effective interventions. It doesn’t need meta-judicial discussions that have nothing to do with every day life. In recent years, there have been discussions on major topics like the separation of the career, the role of the CSM, the Italian Legal Order, but I’ll give four points as an indication, of what the justice system needs: A 30% increase in financial resources for the activity of justice, an increase in the personnel assisting the magistrate, both civil and criminal, that today is 30% below strength with reference to the full complement of 20 years ago, even though there’s been an increase in the scope, a regrouping of the tribunals, in which some are overloaded and others have little to do. So as to optimize the work of the magistrates and of the auxiliary personnel; a redefinition of the role and the activity of the personnel of the judicial police, the carabinieri, the police and the Guardia di Finanza above all, so that they can carry out their activity only in relation to judicial and security police work and not with the administrative tasks, like escort or other activities that can be done by other groups. On the level of trials I intend intervening to reduce the duration of trials, first of all by eliminating the law about the reduction of times of “prescrizione”, created by the Berlusconi government with an “ad personam” law. Secondly, by reducing the number of levels of judgement from three to two, by eliminating an appeal phase if in a trial using the adversarial system as opposed to the inquisitorial system. Thirdly, by creating a regulation that interrupts the “prescrizione” with the remand, thus avoiding all the thousands of codicils of the lawyers. On the topic of substance, an important reduction in the types of crime: the so-called trivial offences must be de-criminalized so as to make way for the battle against major criminality.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Justice