Spanish Justice System is Collapsing under Too Much Paperwork
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| 07-11-2008| Politics & LawA friend who works for the Spanish Justice system reliably informs me that the system is currently on the brink of collapse.
Judges and Justice Ministry civil servants are planning to strike over an administrative workload 250% greater than the system was designed to deal with.
Murcia’s commercial law court – the one that deals with company bankruptcies – has just been swamped with the same number of cases over the past two months as in all of 2007. The family and social courts are facing similar increases.
It was in a criminal court, though, that the little hole appeared in the side of the Spanish Justice system.
In January 2008, a 4-year old girl called Mari Luz Cortés went missing in Southern Andalucia and her body was found fifty-four days later.
A Spanish judge, responsible amongst other things for executing prison sentences, had ‘forgotten’ to order the arrest and imprisonment of a convicted paedophile who had previously sexually abused his own daughter; a man who was thus free to kidnap and murder Mari Luz.
Apart from a clear case of judicial negligence, his court was drowning in a sea of administrative papers – and the piece of paper pertaining to the arrest of the killer was nearer the bottom of the pile than the top, it appears.
The most worrying thing is not the tragic death of Mari Luz but the appalling state of the administrative system behind Spanish Justice. There are fears that dozens of other cases like this – with convicted criminals still free, waiting to be imprisoned – are just a few folders too many below the surface.
What do you do if you can’t buy food?
Over the past past twelve months, I have often spoken with my friend about the social effects of economic collapse: the conclusions are always bad and normally include an increase in crime.
She conservatively estimates an increase of up to 30% in the number of criminal cases the Spanish justice system will have to deal with thanks to the effects of the economic crisis. 30% more cases on top of a workload that is already 250% higher than it should be.
The net result of this will be that, for the next few years, only the most serious criminal cases will be tried anytime soon, and probably not even all of those.
Justice will not be done. Jobs will not be found. Bills will not be paid. People will feel hungry. More people will use rubbish bins as their only option for breakfast, lunch and dinner (this is already happening in Murcia – the waiting list for charity food handouts has increased by 10,000 people since May 2008). People will steal to eat and feed their children. We will not trust each other.
To say nothing of the consequences of the last decade’s massive levels of immigration and its more unpleasant consequences in the current economic environment.
