Within the framework of the General Agreement between the Rafael del Pino Foundation and the General Council of the Judiciary, both institutions signed a new Collaboration Agreement on 21 December 2006, with the aim of developing a study on the costs of delays in a sample of specialised family courts, starting with those of Madrid and Barcelona.
The research centre in charge of the study will be the Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada (FEDEA). The aim of the analysis is to identify and quantify the costs of the slowness of justice, the origin of which lies in unnecessary procedural complexity. As a second objective, the work aims to develop a diagnostic methodology that can suggest measures to improve processes and the judicial office and to generate indicators of permanent knowledge of the management of cases.
In Spain there are currently 70 family courts spread over 25 provinces. The judicial activity planning and analysis service issues a detailed report on the average duration of different judicial proceedings using aggregated data at court level.
The model used for the calculation of the average delay is based on three main assumptions: the uniform distribution throughout the year of incoming and outgoing cases; and the resolution of cases in order of entry. The aim of the research is to work closely with all institutions involved in judicial proceedings to review them and to improve the mechanisms for information gathering and evaluation.