Prosecutors and Politics: A Comparative Perspective (Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, 41, Band 41) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 022600970X ISBN 13: 9780226009704

Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Prosecutors are powerful figures in any criminal justice system. They decide what crimes to prosecute, whom to pursue, what charges to file, whether to plea bargain, how aggressively to seek a conviction, and what sentence to demand. In the United States, citizens can challenge decisions by police, judges, and corrections officials, but courts keep their hands off the prosecutor. Curiously, in the United States and elsewhere, very little research is available that examines this powerful public role. And there is almost no work that critically compares how prosecutors function in different legal systems, from state to state or across countries. Prosecutors and Politics begins to fill that void.

Police, courts, and prisons are much the same in all developed countries, but prosecutors differ radically. The consequences of these differences are enormous: the United States suffers from low levels of public confidence in the criminal justice system and high levels of incarceration; in much of Western Europe, people report high confidence and support moderate crime control policies; in much of Eastern Europe, people’s perceptions of the law are marked by cynicism and despair. Prosecutors and Politics unpacks these national differences and provides insight into this key area of social control.

Since 1979 the Crime and Justice series has presented a review of the latest international research, providing expertise to enhance the work of sociologists, psychologists, criminal lawyers, justice scholars, and political scientists. The series explores a full range of issues concerning crime, its causes, and its cure.

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Michael Tonry is director of the Institute on Crime and Public Policy and the Bennett Chair in Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota. He is also a senior fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement.

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Crime and Justice volume 41 (2012)

Prosecutors and Politics: A Comparative Perspective

By Michael Tonry

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2012 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-00970-4

Contents

Preface Michael Tonry, 
Prosecutors and Politics in Comparative Perspective Michael Tonry, 
Japan's Prosecution System David T. Johnson, 
Prosecution and Prosecutors in Poland: In Quest of Independence Krzysztof Krajewski, 
The Dutch Prosecution Service Henk van de Bunt and Jean-Louis van Gelder, 
The Prosecutor in Swedish Law Petter Asp, 
Prosecution in Washington State David Boerner, 
Persistent Localism in the Prosecutor Services of North Carolina Ronald F. Wright, 
Prosecution in Arizona: Practical Problems, Prosecutorial Accountability, and Local Solutions Marc L. Miller and Samantha Caplinger, 
Author Index—Volumes 1–41, 
Subject Index—Volumes 1–41, 
Title Index—Volumes 1–41, 
Volume Index—Volumes 1–41, 

CHAPTER 1

Prosecutors and Politics in Comparative Perspective

Michael Tonry

Prosecutors are potentially the most powerful figures in any country's criminal justice system. They decide what crimes to prosecute; whom to charge; what to charge; whether to plea-bargain, offer concessions, or divert a case; how aggressively to seek a conviction; and what sentence to propose. Police arrest people, but prosecutors decide whether those arrests lead to charges. Judges preside over trials and sentence convicted offenders, but only those whom prosecutors bring before them.

Police, courts, and corrections systems are much the same in all developed countries, but prosecutors differ radically. Police everywhere mostly wear uniforms, operate within paramilitary organizations, and devote most of their time to directing traffic, patrolling streets, responding to calls, investigating crimes, and apprehending offenders. Local police cultures vary a bit from place to place, as do uniforms, technologies, and organizational structures, but their functions do not.

Courts process cases, act as impartial fact finders and adjudicators, and decide on dispositions. Organizational charts vary, lay judges or juries may or may not be involved, and trial procedures differ, but the core functions and responsibilities are everywhere the same.

Probation, prison, and parole systems likewise are much the same everywhere. They may be well or poorly managed, brutal or humane, and more or less committed to rehabilitative aspirations, but their responsibilities are the same: to manage people convicted of crimes safely and securely, to supervise performance of conditions, to coordinate delivery of services, and to react appropriately when people under their control misbehave.

Individual police officers, judges, and correctional workers may be corrupt or incompetent or insensitive or biased, and institutions may be run poorly, but all those things are palpably undesirable and are everywhere seen as individual or institutional failings. In principle, all these officials and institutions, in every country, are expected to be apolitical, unbiased, and honest processors of offenses and offenders. They are expected to be neutral agents of the state, charged with evenhanded enforcement of law and processing of criminal cases.

Prosecutors are different. They are not everywhere the same. One fundamental difference concerns their relations to partisan politics and public opinion. In most developed countries, particularly in continental Western Europe, Canada, and Japan, prosecutors are resolutely nonpolitical and nonpartisan. They are expected to make decisions about individual cases on their merits, without regard to public attitudes, opinions, and emotions or to politicians' preferences or priorities. In the United States, however, local chief prosecutors in 45 states are elected (Perry 2006). In the federal system, US attorneys are appointed on the basis of partisan and sometimes ideological criteria. American prosecutors sometimes openly and unashamedly take media reactions, public opinion, and political considerations into account when deciding what cases to prosecute and how to handle them. In England and Wales, the director of public prosecutions and her senior advisors are political appointees. Lesser-ranking prosecutors are not elected or selected on partisan political grounds, but political appointees set priorities on the basis of government policy preferences and political interests.

Transparently political prosecutions occur in some places. In some Eastern and Central European countries, justice ministers use the prosecution service to settle political scores. This happened regularly in recent years in Poland (Krajewski, in this volume). Western governments repeatedly condemned politically motivated prosecutions in Ukraine of former prime minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko (Barry 2011) and in Russia of Kremlin opponent Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky (Schwirtz 2012). Political prosecutions are less common in traditionally democratic countries but not unheard of. The American presidential administration of George W. Bush initiated politically motivated prosecutions of Democratic state officials, most notoriously of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (Nossiter 2008), and fired Republican US attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico and other US attorneys because they refused to initiate politically motivated prosecutions (Lichtblau and Otterman 2008; US Department of Justice 2008).

In most developed countries prosecutors are career civil servants, but they are not everywhere the same. In some countries, for example, in Sweden, Finland, and Germany, legal and professional norms predispose prosecutors to be evenhanded, reactive, case processors. In theory and to a considerable extent in practice, they base their decisions in individual cases solely on whether they believe that a crime has been committed, a particular individual committed it, and sufficient admissible evidence is available to justify a conviction. In others (the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States are well-known examples), prosecutors openly exercise discretion over what kinds of cases and which individuals to prosecute.

There are other important structural differences. In some countries, prosecutors are members of the judiciary. Individuals may serve as prosecutors and judges at different times in their careers. In some, they are part of the executive branch of government. In a few, including Norway and Denmark and until 1986 England and Wales, they are (or were) members of police departments. In most countries, prosecutors, although based in particular cities or towns, work for national (or state or provincial) agencies. In a few places, most notably throughout the United States, prosecutors work for local—city or county—governments. Local prosecution agencies in 47 of the 50 American states are headed by elected officials (Wright 2009), as are a few (e.g., Geneva) in Switzerland.

Those organizational differences make a huge practical difference in what prosecutors do and in the roles they play. In most of the developed world, prosecutors project an image of impartiality, objectivity, and insulation from political influence. Many US prosecutors proudly claim to reflect local political and cultural values—as the Boerner, Wright, and Miller and Caplinger essays in this volume make clear. That these vary widely, and therefore...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022600970X
• ISBN 13: 9780226009704
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 366
• Herausgeber: Tonry Michael
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland