Every year Italy pays millions for unjust detentions. The Nordio reform aims to stop abuses, miscarriages of justice and careers without responsibility
There are 27 million reasons to say “yes” to Minister Carlo Nordio’s justice reform, on which Italians will be called to express their opinion on 22 and 23 March in a referendum. The 27 million reasons are the average amount that the Italian state pays every year for unjust detention, or for so-called easy arrests. People who end up in prison based on an accusation that later turns out to be false. The compensation is sometimes used to repay people put in prison for short periods, in others to “make up” for a years-long detention, like that of Beniamino Zuncheddu, a Sardinian shepherd who spent 33 years of his life behind bars before being found innocent. He was 27 years old when the handcuffs were imposed and at the time cell phones and even the Internet did not yet exist. In practice, the State has taken his life, making him observe the world behind a grate.
Obviously I don’t think justice reform will put an end to miscarriages of justice. However, there is a real possibility that it will destroy the careers of those responsible for that unjust detention. Among the innovations that give rise to hope for a change, in addition to the separation of the careers of prosecutors and judges, with separate CSMs elected thanks to a draw, there is the High Disciplinary Court. In practice, it will no longer be an internal section of the Superior Council, whose members are the expression of the political currents of the robes, that will decide whether a judge or a prosecutor has committed an offense and must be sanctioned. It will be a special institution, whose members will be partly appointed by the President of the Republic, partly by Parliament, while the others will be drawn by lot from among all the magistrates, but with a prevalence of judges over prosecutors: six against three, to which will be added the six lay members chosen by the head of state and the Chambers. The law wanted by Carlo Nordio (who, it is worth remembering, was a magistrate all his life before joining the Meloni government) aims to put an end to a system which for years has practically allowed impunity for magistrates in service even in the presence of unacceptable behaviour. In the files opened and closed by the disciplinary section you can find everything. From the judge who beats his wife to the one who mistakes the stalker for the victim, from the molester to those with a high level of alcohol or high cocaine consumption. All remained regularly in their places, continuing to administer justice, as if their behavior did not influence decisions in any way.
Anyone who is a magistrate, regardless of their role, is able, with their sentences, to ruin people’s lives, deciding to put an innocent person in prison, or condemning him to an unjust sentence or, again, denying him compensation or establishing an unjustified one. It is clear that if you carry out such a delicate task you must possess extraordinary balance, which is certainly not found in someone who beats his wife, who makes sensational mistakes or uses substances. The regulations are the crucial issue. If there is no independent section to establish who can be a prosecutor and who must change jobs because they abuse their power, or are simply negligent, it is obvious that justice will never work.
Almost 43 years have passed since Enzo Tortora was arrested on the basis of false testimonies. At the time I was working in Bergamo and right in the prison of the Orobic city the host was dragged in handcuffs accused of being part of the Camorra and of being a drug trafficker. I remember a photo stolen in the courtyard of the prison in Via Gleno, bare-chested due to the heat, with shaved hair. A pillory, which was certainly not canceled by a sentence that arrived years later acquitting him of all charges. The Tortora case was the emblem of judicial errors, of investigations carried out haphazardly, without verifying anything before deciding on the arrests. The magistrates who ordered its translation to prison under the eyes of dozens of photojournalists did not change their profession, but made a career of it. And today things are the same way they were then. Whoever makes a mistake doesn’t pay.
