On November 8, 2024, the Sino-German Legal Cooperation Program of GIZ GmbH, in cooperation with the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, held a training course on German criminal law and criminal procedure law as part of a multi-day training event at the branch of the National Prosecutors’ College in Guangxi Province in Nanning. The course contributed to the participants’ understanding of German criminal law and criminal procedure law, of the guarantees of the rule of law that apply there and of the rights of the accused derived from these in investigation and criminal proceedings. This course took place against the backdrop of the fact that medium and minor crime has become considerably more important in China in recent years, presenting both investigating authorities and courts with new challenges.
In her presentation, Public Prosecutor Ms. Anne Berlips from the Bamberg Public Prosecutor’s Office first outlined the relationship between the public prosecutor’s office and the police, the special features of the prosecution of medium and minor crimes in Germany, the written penalty order procedure not provided for in China, the possibilities of discontinuing proceedings and the details of ordering pre-trial detention.
In his presentation, Senior Public Prosecutor Mr. Thomas Rauscher from the Regensburg Public Prosecutor’s Office then dealt with the system of legal consequences of criminal offenses, the practice of sentencing in Germany, agreements in criminal proceedings, the enforcement of custodial sentences and fines as well as the Federal Central Register.
The contributions from the German experts were followed by a lively and wide-ranging discussion. Among other things, it dealt with the rarely necessary clarification of differences of opinion between the police and the public prosecutor’s office in Germany, the work of the public prosecutors in the prosecution of minor crimes in most federal states and the compensation for prosecution measures if there is no conviction. The participants were also particularly interested in the distinction between criminal offenses and administrative offenses, in investigations against public officials, where the public prosecutor’s office usually gets involved in the investigation at an early stage, and in the consequences of entries in the Federal Central Register.
The discussion also highlighted the differences between the systems in the two countries. For example, pre-trial detention is only ordered in a few cases in Germany, whereas in China it is ordered in the vast majority of cases. In Germany, there is no formally regulated professional exchange either within the public prosecutors of an authority or between public prosecutors’ offices and courts.