Saluzzo: “With the referendum you try the shoulder to the prosecutors and free thieves and drug dealers”

The referendums on justice, “indecipherable”, deserve a “no” for the damage they would cause and are an attempt to give “a shoulder” to the magistrates, says the Attorney General of Turin, Francesco Saluzzo, also strongly critical of the Cartabia reform.

Italians are called to express themselves on justice with Sunday’s referendums. What do you think about the questions and what answer do they deserve?
“They are absolutely indecipherable. I put myself in the shoes of a citizen who does another job: you don’t know what you are voting for. Which opens up a question: does it make sense to have a referendum asking for a popular answer on aspects that cannot be fully understood? Does going over the Parliament make sense, in the presence of an organic reform, on which I too am very critical? I have the impression, as a citizen and not as a magistrate, that there was the will to overcome Parliament and ask for a response from the gut to the country, taking advantage of a moment of crisis of credibility and trust of the judiciary even in the face of our demonstrated inability to self-resolve the moral problem that is massive within the category. Not so much for the individual facts of corruption but with respect to the setting of relations within the judiciary, with the currents, with the CSM. I believe that an attempt was made to give a shoulder above all to the prosecutors “.

With the abolition of pre-trial detention for the reiteration of the same crime, what consequences can you imagine?
“Devastating, because unfortunately we have a country with a very high crime rate. Many facts connected to organized crime are ordinary: they would enter into the prohibition of pre-trial detention. Other consequences would have on crimes in the field of protection of vulnerable subjects, starting with violence domestic, stalking, crimes against the elderly. All the authors of thefts, robberies that are not brutal, all the perpetrators of drug dealing, exactly those that some of the proponents of the referendum would massively want in prison would come out. There is a contradiction: this is why I have the impression that the referendum has an ideological component and not at all an increase in guarantees “.

What do you think of the proposal on the separation of careers between magistrate and judge?
“I have always been against it. The common culture of jurisdiction is fundamental especially at the beginning, when the magistrate is formed in his culture of guarantees, proof, and ethics. In a country like ours, of a prosecutor who does not makes a culture of jurisdiction, I’m afraid: whether he ends up being the lawyer of the police, or that he ends up under the control of the executive “.

In any case, would a constitutional amendment be necessary?
“Yes, and it would take a double path starting from the competition, and a double Superior Council”.

What do you think of the question that would like to repeal the Severino law?
“Can a political and administrative class that wants to make the ethical factor a cornerstone of its existence do without precautionary and preventive mechanisms? Managing the public affairs involves burdens, duties, and also a lowering of individual guarantees functional to the superior interest of the public affairs. I understand that the trial arrives late and then maybe the acquittal arrives, and this is the reason why I find the Cartabia reform very weak, because even with laudable intentions it does not solve the problem of the duration of the criminal trials, which can only be solved with a serious reform of the code of criminal procedure and with resources “.

The Cartabia decree also modifies the ability to report on arrests and reports. Doesn’t it create a problem?
“The presumption of innocence is sacrosanct and in the past there has been a bad governance of the communicative lexicon, because the idea was given that the suspect was the culprit: a corrective had to be found. But the legislation is so draconian as to represent a vulnus citizens’ right to be informed, freedom of information, and the freedom of journalists to search for news, which is absolutely outside the European directive. A gag has been imposed in the hope of guaranteeing the presumption of innocence, which instead is guaranteed through an acquisition of awareness on the part of the prosecutors, and a different communication capacity, which then becomes a common heritage “.