Aipa system errors put citizens’ legal rights at risk

Problems with the Aipa case management system used by Finland’s courts and Prosecutor’s Office have delayed proceedings and caused serious errors, Yle reports. Judges and prosecutors say the system can undermine citizens’ legal protection.

Aipa does not always deliver documents and decisions to the parties or authorities, even when the system indicates that they have been sent. This can cause people to miss deadlines for submitting statements or appealing decisions.

Tuuli Vänskä, chair of the Judges’ Association and a district court judge at Pirkanmaa District Court, said the system’s malfunctions were already extending processing times, which are long to begin with.

“The system showed that both people had been sent information through it in June, but neither of them had received it,” Vänskä said.

In another possible situation, the restoration of a person’s driving licence could be delayed if information about the dismissal of charges in a traffic offence case did not reach the police through Aipa’s distribution system.

If a summons in a criminal case cannot be served through Aipa within the required time, the case could become time-barred. This could also affect the position of the victim.

Couple did not know they had divorced

Vänskä said she had heard at the beginning of September about a couple who did not know that a district court had granted them a divorce.

The divorce decision was made in June, but the couple believed throughout the summer that their marriage was still valid. At the end of August, they learned that the divorce had been official for some time.

The case was one of several examples of problems linked to Aipa. In one criminal case, the system added an extra defendant after charges had been brought. When the trial began, officials had to establish who the person was and whether they were connected to the case. They were not.

In another case, Aipa confused people’s roles. A witness who had been ordered to pay a fine for failing to comply with an order was changed in the system into a criminal defendant.

The system has also prevented judges from making decisions that were legally possible, according to the examples provided to Yle. In one instance, Aipa changed a completed judgment so that aiding a crime became the crime itself.

Outages can paralyse court work

A complete Aipa outage can severely disrupt the work of general courts and the Prosecutor’s Office. Hearings may become difficult or impossible to organise because the required documents are stored in the system.

Vänskä said courts try to avoid cancelling hearings by every possible means. However, notifying the parties can fail because the contact details of defendants, victims, civil litigants and witnesses are recorded in Aipa.

People may have to be turned away from a hearing, and a new date must be found. In busy courts, the hearing may be postponed far into the future, further increasing the backlog of cases.

Court clerks can send hundreds of invitations, summonses, notices and judgments during a week. A fault notification may only arrive weeks later, stating that documents sent from Aipa over a period of two days may not have been delivered, despite appearing to have been sent.

More than 3,000 employees of the general courts and the Prosecutor’s Office use the Aipa case management system.