"If a sentence is not carried out, all the efforts of justice will have been for nothing." This was stated yesterday by the dean judge of Barcelona, Cristina Ferrando, in the presentation of the judicial report of 2022, which revealed that last year more cases entered without the number of judges and courts having increased, which causes a saturation situation.
The courts most affected are those of the executory ones, those responsible for complying with the criminal sentences handed down by the judges. In one year each of the four final courts should enforce 2,400 sentences, according to the parameters established by the CGPJ, but in 2022 they had to face 4,000 sentences, an increase of 66% in their workload.
For this reason, the dean judge calls for the creation of a new court that allows compliance with the sentences. “They are judged that they can raise close to a million euros that later goes to the state coffers. They execute prison sentences or services in favor of the community, withdraw driving licenses and comply with all measures to repair the damage. That means seizing and depositing the amount into the victims' accounts. Their work is essential and they are a key piece in the machinery of justice”, she remarked.
That there are more sentences to hand down is because there is also much more activity in the courts, which have recovered the rhythm prior to the pandemic. The growth of economic activity and tourism also favored the increase in litigation and crime. While everything increases, the judges are overwhelmed. The lack of courts, qualified personnel and the delay in covering the casualties of civil servants deepen the problem in a scenario of increased litigation. At the beginning of 2022, the courts had 174,000 pending cases while at the end of the year, the figure was reduced to 162,000. The courts managed to reduce the traffic jam by 12,000 cases.
The most affected are the courts of first instance, those that settle claims for money, which have to bear burdens that far exceed the limits established by the CGPJ of 700 cases per year per court. The 48 courts of first instance in Barcelona entered 1,900 cases in 2022 when in 2021 they assumed 1,200. This is 700 more augmentation procedures in a single year. "These are not conditions to work properly," lamented the dean judge.
At the end of the month, a new court will be set up, number 49, which, even so, will do little to alleviate the avalanche. In fact, the delegate judge of the first instance courts, Roberto García Ceniceros, put on the table a piece of information that shows the magnitude of the traffic jam. It would take the creation of 32 new courts to solve the saturation, he said.
For their part, criminal courts and investigative courts also suffer the consequences of the collapse. The forms of crime are becoming more complex, especially scams over the Internet, which implies a greater complexity of the investigation work. International requests for information are required – letters rogatory – which delay the process of investigation and resolution of the matter. Quick trials are already ten months late in being held and the resolution of a matter between the time it enters the court and the sentence is handed down can take up to a year and a half.
