In the district of Naplesone of the most complex and articulated in all of Italy, there is a flaw that tears apart the mesh of justice and becomes a serious vulnerability, capable of causing serious damage to the entire judicial system: the lack of staff attributable to the General power of attorneythe first in terms of numbers and workloads in our country.
On the day the placing of is celebrated Maria Rosaria Covelli in the role of new president of the Court of Appeal, it falls to the acting attorney general Antonio Gialanella raise the final alarm: the staff of prosecuting magistrates is crying, and 30 percent of the positions remain unfilled. Gialanella also highlights another alarm: that linked to organized crime which increasingly knows how to become a “business”, and which reinvests illicit capital: «In our district – these are Gialanella’s words again – it is difficult to draw a clear boundary between the civil community , respectful of legality and the criminal context. In the face of a large segment of a healthy society there is also a criminal system that has adopted the actions of entrepreneurship, but it is not true that everything is crime.”
In front of the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio and to the former Keeper of the Seals Marta Cartabiawho with their presence wanted to underline the prestigious appointment entrusted to Covelli, the ceremony was thus transformed into a sort of “appendix” to the inauguration of the judicial year, the day which par excellence marks the writing of the “cahier de doleance ” of justice in the district. Let’s start with the Attorney General’s Office (led by Attorney General Gialanella, while we are still waiting for the CSM to appoint the new Prosecutor). Out of 23 replacements foreseen on paper, today there are 17 in service, and the figure will soon drop to 15 with two imminent retirements. Numbers which also highlight an intuitive disproportion, if we look at the forces on which the judging judiciary of the Court of Appeal can count, clearly superior.
However, it must also be said that in the last period the management guaranteed by Eugenio Forgillo as “acting” president he narrowed the gap attributable to the shortcomings and workloads recorded in the past. And the reduction from 57,293 criminal trials pending in the ordinary sections in the year 2021 to 38,171 at the end of 2023 (with a reduction of 4903 in the last year of my direction alone) is to be considered of considerable importance. Progress was also recorded in the civil sector, where it went from a pending case of 23,146 as of 30 June 2018 to one of 20,473 as of 30 June 2023. In the employment sector, from a pending case of 31,174 proceedings in June 2016, in the latest survey for the 2024 management plan it went – In 2023 – to 7,281 (between work and social security). In total, therefore, 65 thousand files are still pending. In his speech, Minister Nordio for his part reiterated that the intention of Via Arenula and the executive is to fill the deficits relating to the staffing of magistrates, in Naples and in the rest of Italy. “For the first time in 50 years we are filling the magistrates’ workforce,” he declared, “with the aim of doing so within a reasonable deadline, which is 2026.”
«1500 magistrates are missing – concluded the Keeper of the Seals – but three competitions are underway and another two are about to start. We plan to fill the workforce which on paper is insufficient and will certainly need to be increased. Especially in civil justice, the length of trials costs us a couple of points of GDP, so we focus on mediation in order to deflate litigation.”
Maria Rosaria Covelli – the first woman to conquer the highest position in the Neapolitan judicial district – arrives with very clear ideas. With over ten years of experience gained in the ranks of the judiciary and, then, at the Ministry of Justice. In his speech he recalled the weight of the workloads that weigh on the magistrates of the district of Naples: in the last three years 1079 procedural cases have been registered for Camorra crimes alone, and in the Court of Assizes of Appeal alone there are – to date – 92 pending trials. The new president also assured her commitment “to the adaptation of the staff, pending full coverage of the workforce”.
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