Profession
Prosecutor
The public official who decides whether a criminal case is brought, on what charges, and who presents it in court on behalf of the public.
Why the role exists
The prosecutor exists so that the decision to put someone on trial is taken by somebody other than the person who investigated them, against published standards, in the public interest rather than any party’s interest.
Where the role sits
Employed by a prosecution service whose placement — constitutionally separate, inside a ministry, or within a judicial career — is what determines how insulated the office is from the executive.
Responsibilities
- Applying the evidential and public-interest tests to the charging decision
- Selecting charges and advising investigators on what evidence would be required
- Disclosing material that undermines the prosecution case or assists the defence
- Presenting the case in court and making submissions where the system provides for it
What the role decides
- Whether to bring, continue, or discontinue a prosecution
- What charges to bring, where discretion exists
- Applications to the court for orders affecting the accused before trial
What constrains it
- Duties owed to the court and to the accused, not only to the case
- Published charging guidance, against which decisions are made and reviewed
- Disclosure obligations enforceable by the court, with failure capable of stopping proceedings
- Professional conduct regulation in addition to employer requirements
What the work is like
- Substantially office and court based, with case files as the main material.
- Caseloads are typically carried in parallel at different stages, with court dates fixed by the court rather than by the prosecutor.
- The work is largely reading, assessing and writing, punctuated by hearings.
- Contact is mostly with other professionals — investigators, defence lawyers, courts, and in many systems victims and witnesses directly.
- Deadlines are externally imposed and often statutory, which shapes the working pattern more than in most professions.
Skills the role relies on
- Legal analysis applied to evidence that is incomplete, contested, or both.
- Judgement about sufficiency and public interest, which is a decision the role owns.
- Written and oral advocacy, addressed to a court rather than to a general audience.
- Disclosure discipline, which is a professional duty owed regardless of its effect on the case.
- Independence of mind, including from the investigators whose work is being assessed.
Professional standards
The United Nations Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors state the standards: impartiality, protection of the public interest, respect for human dignity, and the separation of prosecutorial from judicial functions. The duty to disclose material that damages one’s own case is the clearest expression of a role that is not simply an advocate for conviction.
Who reviews it
- Internal review of significant decisions, including decisions not to prosecute
- Victim-initiated review mechanisms in some systems
- Judicial supervision of pre-trial applications and of disclosure
- Professional regulators
Shape of the training route
- A legal qualification, followed by entry to a prosecution service or to a judicial career track
- Structured training in charging standards, disclosure, and advocacy
- Progressive authorisation to handle more serious categories of case
How the career tends to develop
- Entry normally requires a legal qualification, and in many systems a specific professional examination or training period beyond the law degree.
- Whether prosecutors and judges form one career or two is a structural difference between systems, not a detail — in some, movement between them is a normal career step.
- Progression commonly runs through case seriousness and complexity before it runs through management.
- Specialisation by offence type is common in larger services.
Commonly misunderstood
- That the prosecutor is the victim’s lawyer. Prosecutors act in the public interest and may take decisions a victim opposes.
- That sufficient evidence requires a prosecution. The public-interest stage exists so that prosecution is not automatic.
How much this varies
One of the most structurally variable roles in any justice system. Prosecutors may be civil servants, judicial officers, political appointees, or elected officials, and the service may sit inside a ministry or be constitutionally separate.
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 of the parquet — the same professional body as judges, but without the guarantee of irremovability judges hold, which is exactly where the debate about their independence sits.
- Japan
- Japan places prosecutors within the Ministry of Justice, a placement that puts the independence question in institutional rather than electoral terms — the same function, insulated by a quite different mechanism from the French one above.
Related careers worth looking at
- Judge, which in some systems is part of the same career structure — see judge.
- Defence lawyer, the opposing professional function with a different duty — see defence lawyer.
- Detective or investigator, whose work the prosecutor assesses and in several systems directs — see detective.
Where this connects
Roles: Judge, Detective / investigator.
Institutions: Prosecution service.
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.