Prosecution Number and Structure Optimisation: the Ways to Fulfill an Eu-Integration Commitments

In this piece author examines the challenges of determining the optimal number and structure of Ukraine’s prosecutorial bodies in the context of fulfilling European integration obligations under Cluster 1 “Fundamentals” of the European Union’s acquis communautaire. The author argues that Ukraine’s ratio of 26 prosecutors per 100,000 population is twice the average (12) in European Union countries and the median (11,1) in Council of Europe member states. Meanwhile, based on the researched data and materials, the author presents arguments that a simple, mechanical reduction in the number of prosecutors without changing their structure or the factors influencing the number of prosecutors will undermine the effectiveness of the justice system. The article identifies the key factors behind the imbalance between the number of prosecutors in Ukraine and that in Europe: 1) compared to European countries, prosecutorial bodies in Ukraine generally have a broader scope of constitutional functions; 2) the ratio of prosecutorial to non-prosecutorial positions (2:1 versus 1:1 in the EU) is a consequence of the existing practise of “formal” prosecutors with administrative and methodological functions; and an irrational distribution of staff, whereby approximately 44% of prosecutors are concentrated in the Office of the Prosecutor General and regional offices (not in the district prosecutor’s offices). Therefore, a set of criteria for optimization has been proposed: redistributing staff numbers in favor of district prosecutor’s offices as the primary level of the system, based on the basic principle of “one level of the prosecutor’s office—one level of the court”, and transferring auxiliary prosecutorial positions to the relevant civil servants in prosecutorial system. Moreover, the author analyzes how crime rates, trends, and patterns of criminality affect the staffing amount of prosecutorial bodies. Consequently author highlights that new threats and tendencies of criminality (cybercrimes, military crimes, and international offenses) require not an automatic increase in staffing, but rather flexible specialization and reorganization. The author also emphasizes the need to ensure an even distribution of the workload (case-load) among prosecutors (taking into account their specializations, performance evaluations, and other factors).