With her report, the president of the Court of Appeal Gemma Cucca introduces the judicial year in the presence of the authorities, including the mayor of Cagliari Paolo Truzzu and the vice president of the Region, Alessandra Zedda.

Spotlights on the pandemic, which characterized and conditioned the period 1 July 2020 - 30 June 2021 and "it was not thought it would last so long". A year with "the suspension and postponement of hearings, the gradual resumption of activity remotely or in writing, then again in presence with the green pass" between checks and, "despite the reluctance of some employees", results "always effective ". The problems: the "known and serious shortcomings of the administrative staff, increasingly accentuated above all due to the large number of retirements also due to the serious discomfort experienced for too long inside the offices". Applications are used which however "create imbalances in the Offices" from which the staff comes. The recent hiring of judicial assistants and clerks was a "breath of fresh air" but "sufficient to face and overcome the difficulties, now excessive. Without administrative staff, the judiciary cannot work fully ".

The Cagliari Court of Appeal gets away with applications from other judicial offices in Sardinia, while Sassari lacks the administrative manager, one of the two directors, two accounting officers, four operators and three auxiliaries. In the Court of Cagliari, the largest on the island, the situation "is of considerable gravity: the average age is 54 with a presence of 68 over sixty", equal to 40% of the staff. As of December, there were 139 employees out of the 218 expected. Sassari lacks the administrative manager, so that the management of the work "falls entirely on the President of the court", a director and a Chancellor of the criminal sector, two judicial assistants and a judicial operator in the criminal sector. Due to a "sudden reduction made by the Ministry, many staff have reduced hours and very strong functional limitations that make it apparent that there is a severely deficient staff coverage", so there are "serious difficulties in defining work within a reasonable time".

In Nuoro the administrative manager has been missing for some time and staff shortages concern all sectors ". Furthermore, "the situation of the staff of the chancelleries is critical". In Oristano there are 55 employees: there are 41. In Tempio the workforce is "undersized compared to the real workload". Even the work in Lanusei is "strongly conditioned by the openings in the administrative staff". The manager is missing and the President of the Court carries out all the functions. Underpowered administrative staff also at the Juvenile Court of Cagliari (where 8 out of 28 workers are missing, including the administrative director and two officials) and Sassari (there are no registrars, three operators, a driver and an auxiliary). The staff of the Supervisory Chancellery in Cagliari was inadequate, calculated on "workloads prior to 1998, considerably lower than the current ones". The uncovering of the organic plant is "endemic": there are 9 directors, officers, drivers, auxiliaries and administrative managers missing. Three magistrates and a section president are missing from the Court of Appeal in Cagliari. There are "alarming" difficulties in Sassari: 4 judges out of 23 are missing and another judge has asked for a transfer. In my work, the uncovering is 50 percent. In Nuoro the president of the penal section has been missing since June and a judge is missing. In Oristano there are 15 judges, in Tempio in the first nine months of 2021 there were 9 of the 13 judges foreseen, seven of which were first appointed. Today I am 13.

The premises of the Court of Cagliari are sufficient to accommodate the judiciary staff, including honorary and administrative staff on duty, but the logistical situation is "unfortunate: rooms, corridors and stairs are cramped" and there is a risk of gatherings. The former fire brigade headquarters in Monastir are being renovated for the archive. In Sassari the premises are insufficient, like the courtrooms. Not all of them have a recording system, sometimes obsolete. "Finally the project to assign the former prison of San Sebastiano to judicial offices" should be implemented. In Oristano the building dates back to the 1960s and is in a "general state of decay". The level of IT technical assistance is unsatisfactory: no system for videoconference hearings.

THE NUMBERS - In Cagliari in civil cases all unchanged, 1730 trials remain to be defined as in 2020; appeals for international protection are being reduced, separations and divorces are growing (a “worrying” increase of 90 per cent). In recent years, proceedings in matters relating to the family have also increased: the health emergency may have "exacerbated family conflict", which is also growing "due to the economic crisis worsening as a result of the pandemic. There was a slight reduction in bankruptcies (from 15 to 12), and labor and social security lawsuits from (329 to 302). In the sector up to June 2020, 1,020 proceedings have been defined, "satisfactory" data with the forecast of an improvement "when the judicial activity can be resumed at full capacity and if and when the number of sections will be increased". The average duration of the trials remains below the threshold of the Pinto Law and "most of the proceedings are defined in one year". From July 2020, "activity has resumed significantly and a previously unsuccessful part of the trials has been recovered".

In the Court of Cagliari, 8,180 civil cases were completed compared to 6,760 of the previous year, with an outstanding amount from 18,901 to 17,267 transactions. 2,210 family cases were defined, appeals for consensual separations were 656 (the previous year there were 588) with 767 definitions. As many as 137 corporate bankruptcy declarations, compared to the previous 117. The number of bankruptcies declared in the reporting period was 137 (against 117 in the previous period). The statute of limitations has increased, from 278 in the previous period to 591 (of which 11 by the Collegial Court); no extinction of the crime for remedial conduct; a single ruling of not having to proceed due to particular tenuousness of the fact. The new terms for the exercise of the criminal action "will involve even more in the immediate future a greater concentration of trial proceedings in the same period, especially for direct summons proceedings, an increase that the Court with the current staff of judges, two uncovered at the hearing, and administrative staff, is unable to support ". There are only two classrooms for the remote trial.

DATA ON CRIMES - Crimes against the public administration decrease (365 proceedings against 388, of which 44 for embezzlement, 21 for corruption and 3 for extortion); undue perceptions of contributions stable (11); no criminal association of a mafia type; eight voluntary murders, like the year before (two victims are women); culpable homicides and serious or very serious negligent injuries increased sharply (139 compared to 68, of which 21 for simple manslaughter and 36 for road homicide, 18 more than the previous year); crimes against sexual freedom are constantly and worryingly increasing (237 against 207); stalking also increased (347 against 260; numerous mistreatments in the family (539). "There is a net increase in crimes deriving from situations of social malaise and individual problems".

Trials for drugs (524) and computer crimes (142) are also increasing; those against assets decreased (1847, of which 8 for usury, 131 for robbery, 89 for extortion, 57 for theft from home, 23 for money laundering); bankruptcies are stable (12), false accounts increase; proceedings for enslavement and human trafficking are decreasing (6); there are 93 processes for pollution, waste or against the environment and people's health; 171 for unauthorized building; tax revenues are growing (176). The data on the statute of limitations are positive: 145 dismissal decrees, 310 acquittals, 34 sentences. 1,300 criminal convictions and 887 trials due to "serious shortages of staff" await notification.

DRUG TRAFFIC - Sardinian organized crime has drug trafficking as its main illegal activity. For years she has been converted. In the inland areas of the island there is not - for demographic as well as social reasons - a relevant drug consumption market. Traffickers therefore supply drugs to those active in the traditional metropolitan areas of the island. A peculiar aspect is the cultivation of vast marijuana plantations with sophisticated cultivation techniques, including the use of genetically modified plants to increase doping efficacy.

Particular attention was paid to contrasting the substantial expropriation of streets and spaces in the city of Cagliari, destined for "squares" for drug dealing by criminal organizations. But it is clear that the repressive action in itself will not be sufficient if not accompanied by the activity of all the public and private subjects involved in the care and management of community life. Drug trafficking puts Sardinian criminals in relation to criminals belonging to criminal structures dedicated to drug trafficking at a national and international level. There is the phenomenon of the Nigerian mafia, criminal structures that directly manage drug trafficking in Sardinia. Secret associations with hierarchies and rites of affiliation that guarantee cohesion and confidentiality. They are engaged in drug trafficking and the exploitation of prostitution of young Africans who are trafficked. They exercise a penetrating control over the territory with the control of commercial establishments and catering establishments. They are often in contact with national organized crime (especially Campania) and have autonomous supply channels from the producing countries of the various drugs. In general terms, drug trafficking is expanding.

Organized crime is part of the economic sectors on the island characterized by high returns on capital or by the arrival of public funding. These are real estate investments in some of the most prestigious coastal areas. Another area subject to particular attention concerns the activities of people belonging to or in any case linked to anarcho-insurrectionist groups. Their action is essentially directed against the military installations and structures of the District.

FAMILY AND SCHOOL - “We need more simplification and less bureaucracy. It seems insufficient to intervene effectively against violence, especially against women, if we limit ourselves to promulgating laws, but we do not intervene by fighting certain deep-rooted cultural problems, adopting political strategies involving all subjects - from schools to the media to health professionals - and adopting measures preventives which, by focusing on training, have the aim of educating and raising awareness by recognizing and realizing equal opportunities in every area of private and public life. Starting with the family and the school. Repressing alone is not enough. Citizens need to regain confidence not only in the judiciary, but also in the entire state. The magistrates are not asking to work less, but to work better, also through regulatory rationalization. The interminable trials are not to be charged to the magistrates but to the legislation which sometimes provides for arduous and long paths also due to postponements of proceedings, sometimes imposed by the often cumbersome legislation. For too long we have worked with absolutely undersized staffs. It is necessary that the magistrates are not self-referential but attentive to the needs of society, demonstrating that they are truly autonomous and independent, free from any form of current ideology and fulfilling the ethical duties of discipline with moral rigor and humanity. Improvisation, approximation and, above all, surrender cannot be among our conceivable options, especially for the many honest citizens who confidently await answers to their legitimate expectations of justice. We must all be absolutely united, aware of the unique essential role we play for others. The legitimacy of the judiciary and its collaborators passes through professionalism, the demonstration of being really and concretely - in an honest, humble, sober, transparent and understandable way - at the service of the community, avoiding any form of protagonism even on social networks to restore awareness of living in a state with just justice, where you can have a fair trial and just magistrates for the sole purpose of concretely guaranteeing the inviolable rights of the citizen and giving credibility not only to us but to the entire democratic state ", is a another passage in the relationship.

Maria Gabriella Pintus (L'Unione Sarda - Manunza)

CSM - Maria Tiziana Balduini, CSM representative, illustrated the expansion of organic plants in the judiciary in Sardinia, underlining the problem of the number of trials exceeding the critical threshold in six courts on the island and underlining the worrying increase in the crimes of the Red Code ( 144). Gianfranco De Gesu, director of detainees and treatment of the Department of Penitentiary Administration, announced the arrival of 248 jurists in the new trial office, a team that "will assist the judge to get quicker answers", and the '' recruitment of administrative staff. Maria Gabriella Pintus, acting attorney general, reiterated the incidence of drug trafficking among the crimes in Sardinia, and recalled the involvement of Graziano Mesina in an active partnership in that field: participation that cost him the 30-year sentence to the basis of his inaction which lasted over a year and recently concluded "thanks to the brilliant result" of the search action "of the Carabinieri".

© Riproduzione riservata