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13. The results of the interviews conducted with the most active prosecutor’s offices: best practices in judicial activitiesAccordingly, the prosecutor’s offices of Trieste, Tolmezzo, Gorizia, Brindisi, andCrotone, where the entry and the mere transit of trafficked persons was mostfrequent, had never resorted to the instrument of the stay permit. At Brindisi, inparticular, the procedure had been activated by officers of the judicial police onlyfor crimes in some way related to trafficking in persons for the purpose ofexploitation.By contrast, it had been most frequently used at the prosecutor’s offices of Perugia,Genoa, Turin, Milan and Ascoli Piceno, in whose areas cases of exploitationpredominated, especially in regard to female prostitution.The prosecutor’s office of Lecce was an exception to the rule in that, although in itsarea the landing of migrants was more frequent than their exploitation, the staypermit for social protection was used whenever it could be assumed that theintention was to exploit the trafficked persons. From the quantitative point of view,in the first two years of application of the provision, i.e. from March 2000 to April2002, 222 applications for stay permits for social protection were made in theprovince of Lecce (about 15% of the national figure of 1500).At the remaining prosecutor’s offices, more limited use was made of the staypermit provided by article 18 C.T. on Immigration for reasons other than the type ofcrimes investigated (trafficking and smuggling). At Brescia, for example, difficultiesarose in convincing the victims of the traffickers to cooperate, because their fear ofreprisals by the criminal groups could not be overcome even by offering the form ofprotection discussed here.13.4.2 UsefulnessOpinions on the residence permit for social protection were generally positive,especially in judicial cases where the intimidation of witnesses was more likely. Itwas regarded as useful for both investigative purposes, because the protectionencouraged the trafficking victims to report crimes and to testify, and for trialpurposes, because the prosecutors could rely on the presence in court of thevictim-witness, thereby overcoming the difficulties of admissible evidence(prohibition of de relato testimony by the judicial police and prosecutor).As mentioned above, the existence of two different paths (social and judicial) hadfacilitated achievement of these two goals. In the experience of the prosecutor’soffices of Lecce and Genoa, this had happened because very often the social pathturned into judicial collaboration. The initial activation of the social path created atrust relationship between the victims and the NGOs that, with the passage of time,became trust in the Italian institutions, and also an incentive to contact the judicialauthorities. At the prosecutor’s office of Perugia, this incentive led to the disclosureof the names, telephone numbers and addresses of ‘travel agencies’ involved inpeople trafficking. One may therefore conclude that the double escape routeprovided by the law, besides representing an advanced form of protection ofvictims’ right, is also an efficient instrument of judicial action.Other prosecutor’s offices (Turin, Genoa) emphasised the positive procedural sideeffects.The ‘stabilisation’ of the victim on national territory achieved through work241