Zurich
It’s chaos at the police and justice center
Completed a year ago, the “Courthouse” suffers from a lack of staff and encounters organizational problems.
Published
Zurich’s new justice centre.
20min/Taddeo Cerletti
Inaugurated in 2022, the new Zurich police and justice center cost 570 million francs. In this building, many services share the premises, which was to save millions. But since then, several negative reports have disappointed the high expectations placed on this new “Courthouse”.
Thus, the Council of State announced Thursday that the exploitation of the prison of Zurich-West, which constitutes a part of the complex, would require 82 additional stations for its operation. With the key: ten million francs per year. In this context, the commissioning of the preventive detention part, with 117 places, has already been delayed and has been postponed to the second half of 2023, as reported by the “NZZ” in January.
Freeing bad people
According to the “Tages-Anzeiger”, several well-informed sources report that this delay is not only due to the lack of qualified personnel. There are larger structural issues that have already led to security breaches. Thus, detainees have already been released by mistake from their pre-trial detention by the police, while others have been held longer. The sources speak of “totally chaotic situations”.
For example, difficulties have already been encountered during the recruitment of 100 new guards from the end of 2020. The training lasts two years, and many have already resigned. There would also be problems of mixing between experienced people and newcomers. In addition, the number of supervisors would have been underestimated.
(ber/jbm)