Nordio: 'Foreign prisoners serve sentences in their countries of origin'

'Given that foreign prisoners account for half of all detainees, it would be appropriate to have foreigners serve their sentences in their countries of origin, and we would already have solved most of this problem'. So said Justice Minister Carlo Nordio speaking at the Taobuk, the Taormina book festival. Prison overcrowding is the result of decades of sedimentation, and is not an immediate solution, he argued, ruling out 'pardon, which is a surrender by the State': 'Rather, I am thinking of alternative punishments, forms of community sentences, since drug addicts are sick people rather than criminals'.

On the justice bill that envisages, among other things, the separation of careers, the minister said he was "open to dialogue": "Modifications can intervene in an ameliorative sense, but always within the parameter entrusted to us by the voters who gave us the task of reforming the Csm, of separating the careers of magistrates. And that is what we are doing, because in democracy the voters have the say and through the Parliament that is its expression'. So yes to the dialogue with the ANM, 'which has already begun and I hope it will continue within the reciprocal parameter of functions', but no more 'petulant litanies' on the intention to subject the pm to executive power: 'I do not accept that one suspects a sort of punitive intention of the judiciary'. Because 'in all Anglo-Saxon countries the careers are separate', and the interchangeability that exists here between judges and prosecutors 'is considered madness'.

'There is a shortage,' warns Nordio, 'of 15 per cent of magistrates. For the first time since the constitution of the Republic by 2026 we will fill the staff by holding competitions. The problem is that the procedures are long. We have the money. With these competitions we will get 400 magistrates'.

The real reform of justice,' says the minister, 'will be in the modification of the composition of the Csm: "And that is what worries some members of the Anm. Let's be clear, everyone knows that the SCM is to the currents of magistrates as Parliament is to the parties, currents that are decisive for the elections of the members of the SCM and since they reflect the will of the electors, you are a relationship between electors and elected that then results in currentist degeneration".