The civil justice service in Guatemala is one of the slowest in the world, according to the Rule of Law Index (RDI) that evaluates 142 countries based on eight factors, published by the World Justice Project (WJP). The country ranks 111th out of 142 countries in the general index (0.44 points).
However, when the subfactors of the “Civil Justice” section are disaggregated, the lowest score is in response times. “Guatemala has a score of 0.13 out of one“Basically, what is evaluated there is whether the civil justice system is not subject to delays that are not reasonable, that is, the time it takes for the civil justice system to resolve,” explains David Casasola, researcher at the Research Center. National Economic (One Hundred). In this subfactor he measures whether civil justice is not subject to unjustified delays, Guatemala is positioned in box 141 out of 142, surpassing only Venezuela.
One of the questions for this subcomponent is regarding What length of time will it take for a judge to reach a decision? from the moment the case is filed until the moment an agreement is reached. A good grade reflects that the resolution is reached in less than a month and a bad grade, in more than five years. For Casasola, the rating of 0.13 reflects “that the majority of people surveyed value that the processes take more than five years.”
The IED measures countries on limits on government power, freedom from corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory compliance, civil justice and criminal justice. Each of them includes subfactors, that between the eight they add up to 44 itemswhich are measured on a scale between zero and one, so that one represents the grade that shows a stronger Rule of Law and zero represents a weaker one.
To obtain this data, the WJP carries out a qualitative study, where scores are assigned to 463 questions asked to two groups from each country: a sample of a thousand people representative of the population and another group of experts in different branches of law.
High judicial default
These long deadlines for a resolution are not limited to the civil sphere, they also occur in other branches such as tax, commercial, or criminalwhich generates a judicial delay in any of these matters.
In the last five years, the areas in which the country is worst evaluated have to do with “absence of corruption”civil justice and criminal justice.
Guatemala is among the countries in which it is perceived that people They cannot access and afford civil justice (140th place out of 142); that civil justice is subject to unjustified delays (141/142) and that civil justice is not effectively applied (139/142).
There is a proposal that works as a pilot plan to diagnose the points where the bottlenecks of judicial delay are and that could provide input to begin to reverse a systemic problem.
These are rooms that have begun to implement Standard 9001:2015 in documented policies, processes and procedures to put a limit, through a quality management system, on the deadlines for court services to the population.
The chambers that are certified today are the Mixed Regional Chamber of the Court of Appeals of Huehuetenango; the same instance, but in Quiche and the Sixth Chamber of the Court of Appeals of the Criminal Branch, Narcoactivity and Crimes against the Environment of Cobán, Alta Verapaz. The latter is chaired by Judge Irma Judith Arrazate, who in 2018 chose to process the certification.
“I started with the idea of improving the service, with the will of the auxiliary staff in this room we talked about it and out of our pockets we paid to receive 16 courses from the Technical Institute of Training and Productivity (Intecap)”. Arrazate and her colleagues covered the expenses of each of the courses on leadership, assertive communication, speed of managing the office and having a clean table, which refers to the entry and exit of processes in the shortest possible time. With this they already met the requirements to request the ISO standard, certificate that they also financed and brought from Colombia.
Obtaining this quality management certification entails complying with three indicators that allow obtaining metrics to evaluate performance and performance “in terms of document entry and output, deadlines for notification and return of files,” explains Arrazate. According to the magistrate, among the 16 procedures registered in the Sixth Chamber of Cobán, each one has a time: the longest is 60 days and the shortest, which is appeals, no more than two weeks.
The audit in the certification process also documents that the response times also impacted the ruling of the sentence, since Arrazate recorded that before the certification “only 10 sentences were handed down per month, now we have handed down up to 40, taking into consideration that only 20 business days are worked in a calendar month.
For Arrazate, the difference between the room he presides over and those that do not have certification is that, although they complete the same processes, in his room they solve them in less time with the use of a methodology based on reading, analyzing and solving. . The rest of the rooms tend to postpone response times, resulting in judicial delaya concept that Arrazate separates into two types: the first is because there is “a lot of work, but it depends on the organization and the number of hearings held in the month. The second is the judicial delay of the official who, having already expired to issue the resolution, does not issue it.”
Rogelio Can Sí, presiding judge of the Cobán Mixed Regional Court of Appeals, which is on the way to achieving certification, affirms that this could be a model to be applied gradually in other rooms in the country, but that the training of staff and the change in “mentality” and “attitude” of the staff of its judges It is essential for a change to be reflected.
Massify practices
Although there are only three rooms certified under the ISO standard and others in progress, such as the mixed appeals room in Cobán, there is a pending task to spread the practice of this model throughout the country.
Gregorio Saavedralawyer and political analyst, considers that the issue falls within the jurisdiction of the highest authorities of the Judicial Branch and that “has to do with an incentive to those who occupy the judiciaries and magistrates, because one of the elements of evaluation for magistrates has to do with the fulfillment of their positions.”
By applying this model for rapid justice, the diagnosis could be achieved to “find where the motivations for judicial delay are.” and if they are inclined to excessive workload“, but states that addressing the loads involves building strategies and mechanisms to make management more efficient, when neither of them are addressed we have the result of what can be excessive saturation.”
What the certification grants, Saavedra highlights, is a clear and panoramic understanding of the process that will identify “where the potential solutions are and whether these can be taken through administrative means or require legal institutional reforms by the highest authorities.”
Saavedra points out that as long as this standard is not promoted to comply with the times in the various processes, the slowness of responses will continue to affect the country in two aspects: the image it projects to the world and the increase in costs for the citizen. The first refers to the fact that, due to slow justice, there is a lack of “appropriate conditions for investment to be generated”, as Saavedra considers it, regarding the country’s competitiveness.
Pablo Hurtado, executive secretary of the Association for Research and Social Studies (Asies), points out that the criterion influences “how to attract greater investment and be more relevant. When we see it at an international level it is an element that always arises and is present also in country risk rating exercises”.
He adds that the lack of prompt resolution in the judicial chambers “it makes everything more expensive.” For example, credit, if someone who is granting credit sees that the possibility of return is going to be complicated because a default will not have the effectiveness of the justice system, what they do, that is to say: ‘my risk is greater, and When it increases I have to raise costs.’ “This creates a chain, since, if the credit is more expensive, therefore, the cost of living will also be affected”, sentence.
In Guatemala “all processes can take years“Even those that should be more agile, such as the collection of alimony or inheritance processes, have become an issue where submitting to the justice system for any type of trial is almost tormenting,” explains the academic.
To this, Hurtado adds that to change this panorama ISO standard practices in theaters are importantsince “to the extent that they can be replicated, with or without certification, what matters is that the justice administration service has the effectiveness it needs.”
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