Conclusion: Achieving the Promise of German Criminal Law

Abstract

In adversarial systems of justice like the United States, prosecutors possess a tremendous range of discretion. They may leverage that power to bring criminals to justice, as well as to ruin the lives of the innocent. In contrast, since the enactment of the first codes of criminal law and procedure in the late nineteenth century, the German criminal justice system has attempted to constrain, if not banish, prosecutorial discretion. In this book, I have demonstrated that,while the German attempt to banish discretion has failed, German prosecutors today struggle to balance their duty to find the truth with rising caseloads. In the final analysis, the organizational culture of the prosecution, rather than the law decisively shapes how prosecutors exercise discretion.