Norway
Criminal investigations in Norway
How prosecutor-led investigation works when the lowest prosecutors sit inside the police: the police investigate, but the prosecution directs — all the way down to the district.
Facts on this page were checked against their sources on .
Criminal investigation in Norway is carried out by the police but directed by the prosecution. Because the lowest tier of the prosecution is embedded inside the police — police lawyers with prosecutorial powers — the direction of the investigation and the police work happen within the same district, under prosecutorial rather than ministerial control. Above the district, the regional Public Prosecutors and the Director of Public Prosecutions supervise and can instruct.
The same idea, explained generally
- What is a criminal investigation?
A criminal investigation is a legally authorised process for establishing whether an offence occurred and gathering evidence that can be tested in court. This guide explains its structure, safeguards, and known failure modes.
- What is due process?
Due process is the requirement that the state follow fair, established procedures before it takes action against a person. This guide explains what it typically includes and how it differs between systems.
Sources
Sources
The Prosecution Authority in Norway (official overview)
Government of Norway (Ministry of Justice and Public Security file store, regjeringen.no) · Government publication · link verified 2026-07-26
An official government-hosted overview of the Norwegian prosecution, fetched as a PDF; the independence and structure principles were independently corroborated in the verification pass (Norwegian Bar Association and other sources). Supports the three-level structure — the Director of Public Prosecutions (Riksadvokaten), the regional Public Prosecutors (statsadvokatene), and the prosecution authority embedded inside the police (police lawyers holding prosecutorial powers) — and the independence principle: the prosecuting authority makes its own independent decisions, and only the King in Council (not the Minister of Justice) may give it general instructions; the DPP is appointed by the King in Council and directs both the prosecutors and the police districts. NOTE: this is a pre-2019 document that states the outdated figure of 27 police districts; the district count is now 12 (see no-stortinget-reform) and only the independence/structure principles are relied on from it.