Maria Shklyaruk

The difference between empirical reality of law enforcement and the one prescribed by the law was described by Eugen Ehrlich. Since then the mechanism of laws transformation into everyday practices has been studied in detail, but many questions still remain. Between law and sociology lies the primary research question of the project - how do provisions of laws that regulate key moments of criminal prosecution transform under the influence of organizational structures of criminal justice (from police to courts) and how do they reflect interactions between criminal procedure participants?

The “criminal case” is constructed from a chain of actors’ actions regarding the supposed crime from the moment the information about the crime appears on the radar of the police to the moment the court delivers a verdict. The global academic trend is to investigate the problem of prosecutorial discretion, i.e. the transfer of the primary locus of decision-making from the litigation to pre-litigation stage. The aim of the project is to determine the key factors responsible for significant differences  in the process of filtering of criminal allegations and suspects i.e. which cases assign to court and why, in otherwise similar legal systems of Russia and Germany.

Performed preliminary research of Russian law enforcement practice shows, that it organizational structure is the key factor in formation of selection and criminal investigations practices in Russia. Next step is to investigate influence of organizational factor on German juridical system. Through Germany has a similar legal system to Russia, organizational structure of German police and prosecutor offices are significantly different. Thus compression of real life juridical practices will allow to test the hypothesis of a strong influence of organizational factors on everyday practice of criminal prosecution.

In order to assess the role and relative contributions of filters envisaged by formal (law) and informal factors (interaction with existing system) I will use analysis of publications/reports on the work of police and prosecutors in Germany in combinations with the field work, e.g. non-participant observation of the work of German courts. I will describe the “criminal case trajectory” in German’s law and everyday practices of criminal justice by using as well traditional comparative-legal methods, as well as sociological methods (“thiсk description” and sociological reconstruction created on the basis of non-participant observation).