Barcelona Last year in Barcelona 526 people committed up to 6,169 crimes. Of these, the five most active of all accumulate 228 records. In other words, during their lifetime they have each committed almost 50 crimes, the vast majority of which were thefts and violent robberies. They are the personified example of multi-recidivism, a phenomenon that has alerted the main cities of Catalonia and has risen by 30% in one year in the capital. But how do you fight? This Tuesday, the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB) and the Barcelona courts have proposed several measures.
Both the dean of the ICAB, Jesús María Sánchez, and the judge dean of Barcelona, Cristina Ferrando, have focused on theft, the crimes most committed by repeat offenders and which, in fact, are also the most recorded in the Catalan capital: they are neither more nor less than 48% of crimes. Specifically, the dean of the ICAB has proposed that the Congress of Deputies reform the Penal Code so that the penalties for stealing mobile phones are harsher and involve imprisonment. Currently, thefts of less than €400 are considered minor offences, but there are nine exceptions. These exceptions include the theft of electrical wiring, telecommunications or infrastructure, historical or artistic items or agricultural products or tools. The ICAB proposes a tenth exception that would include electronic or technological devices, since they consider that the theft of a mobile phone has much more value than the simple device. This would make the offense go from minor to less serious, and a prison sentence of one to three years could now be imposed and therefore pre-trial detention could also be imposed.
“Multi-recidivists must stop laughing at the police and justice,” said the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, from the ICAB event. One of the elements that, in the opinion of the ICAB and also the courts, creates this feeling of impunity for repeat offenders is a point in an August 2022 reform of the Penal Code that was precisely implemented to curb recidivism. This article of the law says that theft can be considered a less serious crime when the perpetrator has already committed three thefts and the sum of what he has stolen exceeds 400 euros. When it comes to applying it, this has made everything even more complicated: it forces judges to consult a detainee’s previous sentences and order an expert report on the value of the stolen object. In the case of Barcelona, as the judge dean warns, the appraisal service in charge of carrying out the appraisals accumulates eight months of delay. And to this is added another obstacle: the data bank only allows you to consult the judgments handed down by Catalan courts. Therefore, both institutions ask to remove this article.
Six new courts
According to Ferrando, judge dean of Barcelona, one of the keys to eliminating multi-recidivism is for speedy trials to work. For this reason, it calls for the creation of at least six new courts, four dedicated to speedy trials and two to execute sentences. Between 2016 and 2023, he recalls, the number of speedy trials has doubled in Barcelona, with four judges holding this type of hearing every day. Ferrando claims that they do not provide the scope and warns that the “underfunding of means” is the main problem that prevents the justice system from responding to the high volume of thefts or petty thefts, often committed by people who involve numerous police arrests, but which, for judicial purposes, cannot be considered multi-recidivists.
Illegal occupations
A conflict that is also often linked to multiple recidivism is illegal occupations, since, according to police sources, repeat thieves tend to live by occupation. In the first semester of 2022, there were 10,220 illegal occupations in Spain and almost half (4,341) were in Catalonia. From the ICAB they propose a reform of the law of criminal proceedings that considers the crimes of violation of domicile and usurpation of immovable property as crimes of permanent consummation. This would imply that the crime continues in time while the occupation is maintained and would allow the principle of flagrante delicto to be applied. This change would allow a judge to order an eviction within 48 hours if the landlord requests it.
2024-03-05 20:06:01
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