NCJ Number
211526
Date Published
2005
Length
473 pages
Annotation
This textbook uses a hypothetical criminal case to compare the practice of criminal justice in the United States and Germany.
Abstract
The introduction in chapter 1 explains that the goal of the text is to develop a better understanding of the workings of the American and the German approaches to criminal justice. The authors present a hypothetical case involving a burglary and robbery committed in Sacramento, CA, and Augsburg, Germany in order to illustrate the perspectives and actions of the major criminal justice participants as they work toward resolving the case. Chapter 2 turns to a discussion of the various ways in which the case may have been resolved in California while chapter 3 describes the handling of the case in Germany. Not only are the functioning of the American and German criminal justice systems described in these chapters, there is also a focus on the reasons for the criminal justice activities and on the tactical considerations of the criminal justice strategies used to resolve the case. Chapters 4 and 5 offer a comparative analysis of the American and German criminal justice systems, using the hypothetical case study to illustrate the main similarities and differences between the two systems. The comparative analysis focuses on aspects of the police investigation, the position of the prosecutor, the work of the defense counsel, pre-trial and trial proceedings, sentencing, appeals, and other post-conviction remedies. Index