15,245 Cases. That’s How Many Are Currently Awaiting Decision From Malta’s Courts
Over 15,000 cases are currently pending for Malta’s law courts, as per data which was revealed following the month of June.
And over 2,000 court cases related to domestic violence are currently assigned to only two local Magistrates, as victims are having to wait over a year just to get to court.
The statistics up to the end of June revealed a significant backlog of domestic violence court cases, as only two magistrates are overlooking the pending cases for the islands.
One of the magistrates, Lara Lanfranco, currently has 1,342 pending cases, while the newly assigned magistrate for handling domestic violence cases, Abigail Critien, has 617 cases awaiting resolution.
This means that if, for example, Lanfranco, had to allocate just a day for each case, some would still be waiting for around four years before their case to be concluded.
The extensive list of pending domestic violence cases appears to substantiate reports indicating that survivors of abuse, who have already endured trauma, are enduring wait times of up to a year for their cases to proceed to court.
This delay is leaving some individuals feeling exposed to the risk of further violence.
The collection of data on domestic violence cases by the Court Services Agency began in July 2021, coinciding with Magistrate Lanfranco’s assignment to such cases. Prior to this, domestic violence cases were treated as district cases and distributed among various magistrates.
In terms of resolved cases, the data indicates that the Court of Magistrates reached decisions on almost 700 cases in June.
Among these cases, 109 were associated with domestic violence, all of which were adjudicated by Magistrate Lanfranco.
What do you make of these numbers?
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