Heightened crime rates across Europe have led to increased workloads for police, prosecution and courts systems and resources have not risen in line. Each country has coped with this mismatch of workload and resources in its own way and in most cases the practices and powers of each of the agencies involved have needed to be changed as a reaction to this.

This book describes the results of a six-nation study of how criminal justice agencies in England and Wales, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden have reacted to high crime rates and punitiveness. It shows how various...