Paradigms of Judicial Supervision and Co-Ordination between Police and Prosecutors: The Italian Case in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article intends to describe and analyse the significance and the limits of judicial supervision in Italy. Observations and conclusions will be mainly based on semi-structured interviews with prosecutors, police officers and lawyers conducted in Italy in 2006. It will be argued that prosecutors can effectively supervise cases that they prioritised even though they may leave the police wide discretion in the investigation of routine cases. In so doing, fresh perspectives in the debate around judicial supervision of police investigations will be explored. The question is of intrinsic interest for the analysis of the operation of continental criminal justice systems. Italian criminal procedure is a mixture of adversarial and inquisitorial legal principles and judicial supervision is firmly based on co-ordination between police and prosecutors (who direct the investigation). Moreover, the nature of judicial supervision has also been a subject of debate within the Anglo-American literature which has examined prosecutorial practice in inquisitorial criminal justice systems. Goldstein and Marcus in 1977 and the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice in England and Wales (Runciman) in 1993 reached similar conclusions: judicial supervision is, in practice, ineffective. Other authors such as Langbein and Weinreb have suggested a different interpretation and remarked on prosecutors’ fundamental contribution, in inquisitorial criminal procedures, to the shaping of the case file. The analysis of prosecutorial practice in Italy can substantially contribute to this debate. And, more generally, it can help to conceptualise the role of prosecutors in contemporary criminal justice systems.

Keywords: Police, Prosecutors, supervision, investigation, comparative criminal justice, legal culture, adversarial, inquisitorial