With the collegial judge more guarantees but risk of paralysis
From the data of the Csm the numbers of staff vacancies in all judicial offices. The knot of incompatibilities and Code Red offences. Start in August but criticalities multiply
It could be one of the first tests for the new post-referendum season in the relations between the judiciary and the government. Because certainly the subject of personal precautionary measures has always been central in the attention of the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio and the decision to intervene already two years ago with a series of amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure testifies to this.
Back then, it was 2024 with Law No. 114, the need to conduct an interrogation of the person concerned before the decision on the application of the measure was introduced with immediate effect. On 25 August 2026, two years later, the other qualifying point was postponed, namely the collegiality of the pronouncement, no longer entrusted to a single Gip.
The issue of staff shortages
A postponement justified by the chronic staff shortage in the Gip offices, from the larger ones where it is possible to set up a specialised section to the medium-small ones, where the function of Gip in the head of the same magistrate is not even exclusive. The data of the Csm in mid-2025 showed (see table below) an already critical situation with a shortage of 123 magistrates compared to the overall organic plan. Therefore, net of the reform, of the obligation to set up colleges that would make it almost impossible for the novelty to start.
Critical issues of which the Ministry of Justice was aware, however, so much so that it had put in black and white, in the same Law 114, the increase of the organic role of the ordinary judiciary by 250 units to be allocated to judiciary functions, especially to those of judge of preliminary investigations, being able to count on extraordinary competition procedures, the outcome of which, however, is yet to be verified and which could in any case prove insufficient.
The other critical issues
In fact, playing against and making the risk of paralysis very real are also other factors both on the level of staffing and on that of the times of duration of criminal proceedings. On the first, crucial is the issue of incompatibilities destined to affect smaller offices by multiplying the cases of impossible participation in successive stages of the proceedings. Then there is the issue of multi-subjective proceedings, where personal precautionary measures could be envisaged for some suspects, unnecessary for others, lengthening the issues of file management.
