Institution type
Prosecution service
The body responsible for deciding whether criminal cases are brought and for presenting them in court.
Why this kind of body exists
Separating the decision to charge from the body that investigated introduces a second judgement into a process that would otherwise be closed. The investigator has spent months forming a view; the prosecutor asks whether the evidence would actually survive a trial. That separation is a safeguard against the investigation marking its own work.
What distinguishes it
- Holds the charging decision, separately from the body that investigated
- Owes duties to the court and to the accused, not only to its own case
- Operates against published charging standards in most systems
Typical mandate
- Applying evidential and public-interest tests to charging decisions
- Disclosure to the defence
- Presenting cases and, in many systems, making submissions on sentence
How authority reaches it
Where the service sits determines how insulated it is from the executive, and placements range from constitutional independence, through an office inside a ministry, to a branch of the judicial career. The United Nations Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors set out the standards expected of the office — impartiality, protection of the public interest, respect for human dignity, and separation of prosecutorial from judicial functions — without prescribing any particular institutional placement.
Commonly confused with
- With the police, from whom it is separate in most systems
- With the judiciary, though in several countries prosecutors are part of a judicial career track
- Between country-specific titles that do not denote the same role
Where it exists
Nearly universal as a function; its institutional position varies more than almost any other body. It may be constitutionally separate, part of a ministry, or part of the judiciary, and that placement determines how independent it is of the executive.
What examines it
Prosecutors are accountable in an unusual way: much of the review happens inside the case itself. Disclosure obligations, the court’s supervision, and the possibility that a decision is tested on appeal do more day-to-day work than any external complaints body. Where a prosecutor can also direct an investigation, that supervisory power is itself part of policing accountability.
Worked examples
Systems this platform has researched. Each example shows how one country actually arranges this — including where it departs from the general pattern.
- France
- French prosecutors are magistrats, part of the same professional body as judges but without the guarantee of irremovability that judges hold — a placement that makes the independence question concrete rather than abstract.
- Japan
- Japan shows the same function inside a quite different architecture, which is why prosecutorial independence has to be assessed per system rather than assumed from the existence of a prosecution service.
Where this connects
Roles: Prosecutor, Judge.
Institutions: National police, Federal investigative agency.
Sources
Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors
United Nations (adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, Havana, 27 August – 7 September 1990) · International organisation · 1990 · link verified 2026-07-23
Supports the international standards expected of prosecutors: impartiality, protection of the public interest, respect for human dignity, and the separation of prosecutorial from judicial functions. Non-binding guidance, not a description of any national prosecution service.
Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime · International organisation · link verified 2026-07-23
Supports the existence of the UN crime prevention and criminal justice programme and its standards-and-norms work across policing, courts, and prisons. Does not support any country-level claim.
Ministère de la justice (France) · Government publication · link verified 2026-07-24
Supports: the definition of the parquet / ministère public; the 'magistrature debout' description and the siège/parquet distinction; the hierarchy from procureur général to procureur de la République; that parquet magistrates act 'sous l'autorité du ministre de la Justice' and receive 'des instructions générales du ministre de la Justice mais en aucun cas dans les dossiers judiciaires'; that they do not benefit from the guarantee of inamovibilité; and the prosecutor's direction of investigation and discretion over case outcomes. An official self-description of the formal rule. It does NOT establish that the rule is observed in practice, and cannot settle the contested question of prosecutorial independence in either direction.
History and Organization of Public Prosecutors' Offices
Ministry of Justice of Japan (moj.go.jp) · Government publication · link verified 2026-07-25
The Ministry of Justice's own English account, read directly. Supports: that there are four types of Public Prosecutors' Offices — the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, high public prosecutors' offices, district public prosecutors' offices and local public prosecutors' offices — located corresponding to their respective courts; and that prosecutors' offices are attached to the courts but are not part of them. Supports the prosecution structure and its correspondence to the court hierarchy. It does NOT here establish the Minister of Justice's power of direction over prosecutors: the Public Prosecutor's Office Act is marked 'not yet translated' on the official database, so that relationship is left unstated rather than asserted from an unread source.