There has been a lot of talk these days about American justice, about Trump’s trial(s), but you dear friends who live on this side of the Ocean have no idea of the chaos in which the Italian justice system is burdened.
Reform has been talked about for years but no one, really no one, can get their hands on it organically. Even in these hot, hot August days, at the last acts of Parliament before the bathing break, bathers permitting, furious clashes between majority and opposition have occupied the scene beyond rational public understanding. Much ado about nothing would say Shakespeare, however much ado about little.
From Draghi onward, just to mention the last two years and not the tragic discussions that have been going on since Tangentopoli, that is, since 1992, a thousand efforts only for small steps. No one even remembers anymore the post-Democratic pirouettes of poor Minister Cartabia: now, every time her successor at Justice Nordio speaks, proposes, writes, open the sky.
The latest issue the Prisons Decree, a first attempt by the government to get a handle on a complex and dramatic situation: overcrowding and suicides, poor overall quality of detention for a self-respecting democracy. Institutions need to be rationally emptied with alternative sentences, facilities rebuilt, staff hired, but when it comes to reviewing the criteria for custodial justice the left and right are at each other’s throats.
Oppositions actually think that the government wants to protect white-collar workers at the expense of ordinary citizens. This is not so, but it would be a long time now to deal with this technically, and we will do so in due course. The real problem is that reform on these issues requires a comprehensive view of man, rights and duties, and the limits of our system, while in Italy we proceed by ideological walls and corporate clashes.
Mattarella has promulgated the prison decree but his role as formal arbiter on these issues is increasingly difficult. We will talk again in September, umbrella strike permitting.
The article Much ado about little comes from TheNewyorker.
