GL public prosecutor's office Internal problems divide Glarus public prosecutor's office
Non-transparent management, unsatisfactory work organization and hostile group formation at the Glarus public prosecutor's office: in a recent investigation report, the district council's audit committee has identified problematic conditions at the prosecution authority.
10.07.2024, 10:46
10.07.2024, 12:44
SDA
The Control Committee (CPC) acted on a mandate from the cantonal parliament at the end of December 2023, as it announced on Wednesday. The special audit was triggered in particular by considerable staff departures. In 2023 alone, a whole third of the workforce left the company.
The GPK report paints a downright disastrous picture of the internal state of the public prosecutor's office. The problems of the last two years are complex and multi-layered and may still exist, according to the report.
The criticism of the GPK covers all organizational levels. Deficits were identified in the prosecutors and caseworkers as well as in the management of the authority, but also in the cantonal personnel service and the responsible Department of Security and Justice and its head, Councillor Andrea Bettiga (FDP).
Staff at odds, management lacking transparency
At the heart of the difficulties is the dissatisfaction of the public prosecutors with the non-transparent allocation of cases and the unbalanced allocation of on-call duties. In addition, there is a hostile conflict within the staff following mutual recriminations.
According to the GPK, the head of the public prosecutor's office lacked "open and regular communication and comprehensible justifications" for the strict organizational guidelines. It was also criticized that suggestions for improving the work situation were neither considered nor appreciated.
"In general, the transparency of communication within the public prosecutor's office was inadequate", was one of the findings of the audit committee.
Furthermore, the dimension of the labor conflict in the public prosecutor's office was underestimated by the personnel service. And finally, both the head of the department, Bettiga, and the HR department did not provide enough support to the management of the public prosecutor's office in solving the problem and generally behaved too passively.
Team building and leadership training
The CPC formulated a series of recommendations to get the cantonal prosecution service back on track. It proposes reviewing the organization in terms of work processes and efficiency, implementing team-building measures and improving management.
The workload should be "comprehensibly distributed" among the public prosecutors so that they can work more independently and autonomously. It should also be examined whether minor offenses could be dealt with by trained case handlers in order to relieve the burden on public prosecutors.
The GPK recommends coaching for the head of the public prosecutor's office to further develop his management style. The CPC expects more proximity and management of personnel matters in the departments from the Personnel Service.
Ordinary recruitment instead of election
The GPK also recommends changing the current constitutional provision on the election procedure for ordinary public prosecutors. In future, only the first public prosecutor should be elected by the district council, while the remaining public prosecutors should be recruited in the normal way.
In an initial statement on the GPK report, the Glarus government supports this proposal. A review of the organization of the public prosecutor's office is already underway and active team-building has already been installed in the office, the government wrote.
