Coping with overloaded criminal justice systems2006

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...