While more hands are coming to the police and the prosecution, there are not immediately more to the courts. And it meets harsh criticism from the Judges’ Association’s chairman, Mikael Sjöberg.
– If you want to arm the prosecution and have a result out of it, you will also have to arm the courts. I have said this to politicians so many times.
– We lack hands to handle this, he says.
With the police settlement, a total of approximately 310 man-years will be added to the criminal proceedings in the police and the prosecution when the strengthening is fully phased in in 2023.
The agreement states that the parties agree that “it must be ensured that the piles of cases are not just pushed on to the courts and the Prison and Probation Service.”
– The parties to the agreement agree that there is a general need for measures that can support a fast and efficient criminal proceedings, it says.
In addition, in early 2021, the government will present a bill that “aims to streamline criminal proceedings across the criminal justice chain, including in the courts”.
But Mikael Sjöberg does not give much for it.
– Over the last many years, we have picked all low-hanging fruit. What remains to be streamlined, if it is not to go beyond legal certainty, is very, very little.
– The excellent prosecution settlement will therefore be a bit of a blow in the air, because the courts will be a bottleneck, he says.
Several courts have recently reported very long case processing times.
In November, the Court in Glostrup stated that it must wait until March 2022 before there is room in the calendar for both criminal and civil cases.
This time perspective applies to civil cases that last one day and the many criminal cases that, for various reasons, do not have to be at the front of the queue.
– In advance, our case processing time is increasing. If you add on top of that that the prosecution has to produce far more cases than now, it does not require much head count to say what happens in a crowded court system, says Mikael Sjöberg.
Source: The Nordic Page