TRAVEL REPORT The Hon. Michael Atkinson MP Attorney-General ...

in other countries . The biggest priority facing the country was the reform ofthe justice system in preparation for membership of the E .U .There is a huge backlog of cases before the courts, currently 1'/z million casesare waiting to be heard and another 2 million are to be filed this year, totalling3'/2 million . It was proving difficult to find a model or formula to speed up thesystem . Civil cases are the biggest problem, and so is re-organising thejustice system and finding ways to encourage judges to work more than fourto five hours a day . One measure being adopted to redress the problem wasthe development of a justice academy to train more judges .A Mediation policy is being developed this year even though it has nottraditionally been practiced as part of their system . The major issuesconfronting the criminal justice system are human trafficking, illegalimmigration and prostitution .In the old communist system being a judge was not considered to be a careerwith a high status and not suited for an ambitious person as they weregenerally told what to do . The image of the Judicial System was still not gooddue to the huge backlog of cases and land register problems . When Croatiabecame independent, there was a backlog of about 800,000 cases which hadnow increased to 1'%million . Finland, Austria and the US are involved inhelping resolve these problems . Finland is assisting them to create anIntegrated Court Management system while Austria is helping with theresolution of the land register problem, which will require the establishment ofan entirely new land register. The US is assisting in the Alternative DisputeResolution/Mediation project . Experts from Germany are providing theexpertise to set up the Justice Academy which should be operating from 1January 2005In relation to the crime rate Croatia does not have many prisoners . There areseveral categories of labour prisons where the prisoners work on farms andgo home on weekends or work and then spend time in the prison in theevenings . A very productive furniture factory which last year earned the State50 million krona is run using prison labour .Prisoners are paid about 50% less than the normal salary . In many cases,this type of rehabilitation works better than having prisoners in closed prisons .A rehabilitation approach has been pursued since the early 90s and theprograms are well resourced to the ratio of one worker for every four to fiveprisoners .We were told that Croatia is keen to change the judicial system to reflect thecommon law tradition . The Hague Tribunal was set up as a result of the warand a lot of interventions were made to accommodate The Haguerequirements in order to get some of the cases back to Croatia . The reasonfor wanting to bring those trials back to Croatia is because The Hague intendsto operate until 2010 but has no exit strategy .Travel Report, Hon . Michael Atkinson, M.P. and Ms . Vini Ciccarello MP., August, 2004 44