Few justices of the peace, too many cases: proximity justice at risk

Few magistrates on duty, only 35% of those provided for in the establishment plan. A high number of cases in charge and destined to increase with the new competences coming in a year's time. Insufficient administrative staff. And a problematic transition to the telematic process. These are the ingredients of the crisis in the offices of justices of the peace, noted by several parties and in recent days relaunched by lawyers, who have denounced the lengthening of the time taken to set hearings and issue decisions, especially in the civil sector.

A breath of fresh air could come from cutting the length of stay at the trial office of new judges: it is now two years, but there is a proposal to reduce it to six months.

Justices of the peace represent proximity justice: distributed in 390 offices (there are 140 courts), they are honorary judges with jurisdiction over numerous civil cases: one third of the total in 2023, when more than one million proceedings were registered in justices of the peace offices and two million in courts. In 40 per cent of cases, justices of the peace were called upon to recover debts (over 400 thousand monitory proceedings). More than 150 thousand cases, on the other hand, concerned movable property, 140 thousand oppositions to administrative sanctions, almost 120 thousand compensation for road accidents and 18 thousand immigration.

These are all requests that, to date, end up on the desks of the 1,230 justices of the peace in service, according to data from the Csm: 35% of the 3,481 envisaged in the workforce. A situation of distress also highlighted by the monitoring carried out by the Organismo Congress Organismo Forense on a sample of 205 offices. From the analysis it emerges that vacancies are widespread throughout Italy, but they affect the largest offices the most: in those with more than 50 judges on the establishment plan, only 21% are in service. In addition," the report states, "the administrative staffing levels need to be updated and, on the digitalisation front, the tools are lacking and the applications are not correctly matched to the activities. "The situation is dramatic,' urges Accursio Gallo, Ocf secretary, 'We are seeing cases postponed to 2026 and beyond. We need a major investment plan, otherwise we risk paralysis'.

Among the most penalised offices is that of Turin: 'In the organic plan we have 139 justices of the peace, but only seven are present,' explains the president of the court, Modestino Villani. "At the beginning of October, there were almost 24,000 files, of which 12,387 injunctions, 2,597 oppositions to administrative sanctions and 299 in immigration matters. This last figure is contained because now the Turin CPR is closed; if it reopened, the matter would explode. From January, the first 21 new justices of the peace will arrive to complete their two-year term at the trial office. But this is not enough: new calls for applications would be needed to recruit magistrates'.