The senior judge 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 justice does not have the capacity to take them on. The situation is extreme. Quick trials are held a year after the crime is committed, when the period should be 15 days, and minor crimes, mostly thefts, are tried almost a year later, shortly before they expire. “In Barcelona there is no more crime than in other European cities, but there is an understaffing of the courts,” the senior judge lamented yesterday in a meeting with journalists.
The person responsible for the organization of Barcelona's courts estimates 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 occur. Her proposal proposes creating four criminal courts, which address less serious crimes, which carry prison sentences of less than five years, such as robberies with violence or intimidation, injuries, alcohol tests and cases of domestic violence. And she also demands two additional execution courts to enforce the sentences that are handed down.
This petition joins the demand 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 statute-barred. The proposal for the creation of new bodies has been raised to three bodies: the Ministry of Justice, which is the administration that must provide the budgetary allocation; the General Council of the Judiciary, which appoints judges, and the Generalitat, which appoints officials.
The figures corroborate the seriousness of the matter regarding quick trials. In 2022, 7,242 criminal trials were registered in Barcelona and 5,969 could be held. The rest, 1,273, remain pending trial next year. This is how the traffic jam is created. On the other hand, in Madrid, 5,490 trials were scheduled and 5,603 were held, which also allowed pending cases from the previous year to be absorbed. These data show that the mechanism between investigating the fact and sending it to trial works, since the trials are indicated, but they show that there is a lack of bodies to prosecute them and enforce the sentence. “In Barcelona we have a good mechanism, but there is a funnel. We do not have enough courts,” says the senior judge. “We have a quarrel that we cannot absorb. The workload of these courts is 60% higher than what is recommended by the CGPJ,” adds Cristina Ferrando.
Currently there are four criminal courts. Two on a consolidated basis and two more in reinforcement that hold a minimum of 36 trials a day and a maximum of 40, from Monday to Friday. Four reinforcement judges with territorial assignment are assigned to the two provisional courts, initially planned to fill vacancies, but who were assigned exclusively to holding quick trials to address saturation. “It is a temporary solution, a patch,” warns Ferrando.
In parallel, the senior judge asks for confidence in justice to confront the phenomenon of multiple recidivism and warns that we must differentiate those who accumulate many arrests from those who record repeated convictions. “A multiple repeat offender is not the same as a multiple detainee. Justice needs evidence to convict, not just suspicions.”
