Coping With Overloaded Criminal Justice Systems : The Rise of Prosecutorial Power Across Europe

Heightened crime rates across Europe have led to increased workloads for police, prosecution and courts systems and resources have not risen in line. Each country has coped with this mismatch of workload and resources in its own way and in most cases the practices and powers of each of the agencies involved have needed to be changed as a reaction to this.

This book describes the results of a six-nation study of how criminal justice agencies in England and Wales, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden have reacted to high crime rates and punitiveness. It shows how various solutions have been found, involving diversion of cases from courts, increases in financial penalties imposed by police or prosecutors without full court hearings and the introduction in some countries of "administrative offences".

The book reveals the fast-moving and far reaching changes that are now in process involving wide-scale changes to the way justice is being delivered throughout the EU.

The comparative study documented here was supported by the Fritz-Thyssen Foundation and the European Commission. It examined prosecution services in different European countries intending to understand their national role and function within the respective criminal justice system and thereby to highlight common features and important differences between European systems. The prosecution service is regarded as a part of the criminal justice system; a coherent system under pressure to deal with high numbers of cases. Within this system the prosecution level is increasingly becoming the decisive stage reducing its workload by means of simplified methods and proceedings.

The research was carried out by a network of experts from England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden in order to develop common questions and data collection concepts and to gather the country-specific information required to allow comparison. The study deals with an area in which little research has been done and which is increasingly becoming the central, decision-making level of evolving criminal justice systems, with far-reaching consequences for society and the fundamental principles of criminal law.

This book contains:

• A Comparative Part

• Aim and Approach of the Study
• Comparative Data and Synthesis
• Case Examples

• Country Reports
• Appendix with the Questionnaire