The senior prosecutor of the Canary Islands, María Farnés Martínez Frigola, assured this Friday that no relationship has been noted between the increase in crime and immigration.
"There are only four proceedings in which an unaccompanied foreign minor is involved," Martínez Frigola detailed during an appearance in committee in the Parliament of the Canary Islands to present the Prosecutor's Office report for 2023.
The juvenile centers are "very saturated", which makes the work of educators difficult and leads to "more anger and bickering, but nothing special," said the senior prosecutor, who thanked the Government of the Canary Islands for its efforts, because no other autonomous community is in this situation.
According to the Prosecutor's Office's compilation, in 2023, 697 boats arrived in the Canary Islands with 40,190 migrants, and 36 deaths, 143 arrests, and 95 imprisonments were recorded.
Most of the migrants were men (36,191), while 2,272 were women, 3,193 were minors whose age was determined by tests, and 2,084 were "undoubted" minors.
The large arrival of minors, mainly from August onwards, led to the transfer of a unit of specialists from the Civil Guard to Tenerife to carry out age determination tests.
In the first half of the year, 236 age determination files were initiated in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but by the end of the year, there were 2,410 in total, thanks to the fact that this special team of the Civil Guard carried out 1,300 tests in a month and a half.
In Las Palmas, 1,600 files were opened for age determination in 2023, and in the entire Canary Islands, 3,471 files in total.
María Farnés Martínez emphasized the lack of resources to assist victims of domestic violence, especially in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where women are often forced to withdraw their complaints due to the lack of support and capacity to know their alternatives and rights.
"If the victim protection offices do not work, they understand that the lesser evil is to withdraw the complaint and return to their aggressor, but it is for an economic reason," the prosecutor denounced.
Martínez considered it striking that the crime that increases the most in terms of gender violence is the breach of sentence and precautionary measures, generated by a recovery of coexistence, as protection measures fail.
Regarding the evolution of procedures and crime, the prosecutor indicated that 149,285 criminal procedures were processed in 2023, with a decrease of 7.3% in the province of Las Palmas and an increase of 15.59% in that of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Sentences of conformity increased to reach 98% of cases, said Martínez, and defended that progress be made in the implementation of restorative justice or mediation as alternatives in conflict resolution.
Crimes against life and physical integrity increased in the province of Las Palmas in 2023, although intentional homicides decreased, unlike in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where the latter went from 38 in 2022 to 60 in 2023.
In the civil sphere, the Prosecutor's Office's complaints include the delay and lack of quality in psychosocial evaluation reports, the saturation of meeting points, and the permanence of people with disabilities in hospitals despite having been discharged.
The Prosecutor's Office report also reflects an increase in crimes related to the use of new technologies and cyber-sexist violence, as well as an increase in proceedings in environmental crimes.
Regarding the infrastructure available to the Prosecutor's Office, Martínez recalled that the facilities at the Santa Cruz de Tenerife headquarters have an urgent need for expansion to become similar to that of Las Palmas and be able to offer an equitable level of service.
The deficiencies in Tenerife limit the capacity to increase the number of prosecutors and judicial bodies, which affects the quality of the administration of justice, she denounced.
There are also deficiencies in Puerto del Rosario, where the situation is critical: the headquarters does not have ventilation, air conditioning, and, on occasions, there are floods of sewage, which prevents its expansion and forces prosecutors to work from their homes.
In San Bartolomé de Tirajana, prosecutors have had to be transferred to the City of Justice of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria due to lack of space.
The situation is such in that headquarters that a reinforcement official has been renounced because there was nowhere to place him
