The Managerial Perspective and Systems of Accountability in Judicial Offices

In Italy, the machinery of justice has been, on more than one occasion, the subject of criticism. For the most part, the criticism has been relative to the slowness of trials and the inadequacy of the judicial system, deemed not capable of confronting the request for continuously evolving justice in an exhaustive manner, whose characteristics change in time based on the emerging needs of society. The analysis of the justice system was, in fact, generally not subject to enquiries on offices' productivity and to evaluation of the management of resources invested in the sector. The same centres of data elaboration and the related departments at the Ministry of Justice, for example, have not gone much further than collecting the statistical data and creating the generic indicators of service quality. Such parameters, though, are often revealed to be too bureaucratic and of little use in proposing ameliorative solutions of the service offered to citizens, who desire levels of protection that are more responsive to their expectations. In this sense, the application of the system of accountability within the judicial system can contribute to the managerialization of the service.