Trial, new crimes and prisons: challenges on the table for criminalists
The profession will undergo changes that will affect its daily work but will continue to play its role in protecting citizens
"We must not be afraid of change, because inevitably the profession of criminal lawyer will undergo profound changes. But, even if the scenario changes, we must continue to play our role as the citizen's sentinel of freedom'. This is the warning that comes from the President of the Union of Criminal Chambers, Francesco Petrelli, reasoning on the challenges that the community of criminal lawyers will have to face in the near future.
Even more so now, after the 'no' vote in the constitutional referendum on justice last March, on which criminal advocacy had invested heavily. 'A fundamental problem remains open,' Petrelli comments, 'namely what kind of justice this country wants, because the current procedural model is clearly suffering. It seems to me that a coherent and organised vision of justice is lacking. We are witnessing a substantial ambiguity, in which guaranteeist instances are mixed with clearly securitarian instances and different motivations'. The risk, according to the president, is that we will end up with a justice reform - which in any case remains necessary - that is downgraded in terms of quality, with a trial that he believes is already unbalanced on the investigation phase and with a devaluation of the trial ascertainment. "My fear," he adds, "is that a trial far removed from the right of defence will be thought of, because the model that seems to dominate even in the collective imagination is that of a trial that rewards speed, efficiency, and the quantity of sentences. It spreads the vision of cases as a product to be disposed of without considering the protection of the individual's freedom'.
Moreover, if the referendum has been rejected, a series of bills remain in the field that for various reasons appear to be stalled and whose resumption is considered necessary by criminalists: 'I am thinking,' Petrelli comments, 'of the statute of limitations law, or the one on telematic seizures, which concerns an aspect that has now become as fundamental to our lives as electronic devices, on which guarantees should be raised. Then there is the whole issue of wiretapping,' he continues, 'here too it is a question of defending a fundamental principle of protecting privacy. These are all important issues that revolve around the fundamental guarantees of the individual.
Looking instead at the future of the legal profession, what we are witnessing, according to Petrelli, is an 'anthropological mutation: the telematic trial model introduced by the Cartabia reform,' he comments, 'profoundly changes the way of operating and the fall of orality means that courts are no longer places of confrontation. Added to this is the lack of a structural reform of the process and the system, i.e. of the organisation of the judiciary itself, including the rules that determine careers and appointments. All this shows us a clear crisis'.
There are many problems highlighted by the president of the Union of Criminal Chambers, starting with the security decrees and continuing with the situation of prisons (64,412 inmates present in penitentiary institutions on 30 April last compared to the 51,265 regulatory capacity), which represent two aspects, according to Petrelli, of the same issue, i.e. the model of justice that is intended to be implemented. 'Raising penalties,' he explains, 'and introducing new crimes are purely communicative operations that have no beneficial effect. Even the idea that a harsher and repressive prison without discounts is good for citizens is a misrepresentation of reality, because we know that exactly the opposite is true. The hard prison is the most unfortunate choice'.
