Discretionary Criminal Justice in a Comparative Context

The volume brings together a broad range of scholars working within a variety of procedural traditions in Europe, North America and China. Some authors focus on their own jurisdiction whilst others are explicitly comparative in their analysis. Their work addresses the nature of discretion as it operates at various stages of the criminal process, from the initial decision whether to initiate a criminal investigation, through to the ultimate sanction that may be handed down to a defendant – the imposition of the death sentence. The papers are the product of the conference on discretionary justice held in Ravenna, Italy in May 2013, the fifth in a series, which began in 2009 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, addressing the future of adversarial and inquisitorial systems of criminal justice