New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, a Crown prosecutor is a private lawyer appointed to

prosecute A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tr ...

indictable offences on behalf of

the Crown The Crown is the state in all its aspects within the jurisprudence of the Commonwealth realms and their subdivisions (such as the Crown Dependencies, overseas territories, provinces, or states). Legally ill-defined, the term has different ...

. Unique for western democracies, New Zealand is the only country to outsource prosecution of serious crimes to the private sector.

Structure

New Zealand, unlike many other jurisdictions, does not directly employ many lawyers to lay prosecutions. The chief law officer, the

Attorney-General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general or attorney-general (sometimes abbreviated AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. The plural is attorneys general. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have exec ...

, is responsible for prosecuting offenders. However, as a Government minister, the Attorney-General will conventionally not involve himself in individual cases. Instead, the work of prosecution has been delegated to the

Crown Law Office The Crown Law Office (Crown Law) ( Māori: ''Te Tari Ture o te Karauna'') is the public service department of New Zealand charged with advising the government on legal affairs, representing the government in appellate cases, and overseeing the pr ...

, headed by the Solicitor-General, who is a senior civil servant rather than a

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

. The Crown Law Office, among other duties, supervises the prosecution of major criminal offences. Much of the prosecution work itself is performed by the Crown Solicitors, 16 senior lawyers in private law firms, each appointed for a particular district, and lawyers working for them. Crown prosecutors appear for all prosecutions in the High Court and those in the District Court where the defendant has elected

trial by jury A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significan ...

. In most other cases, the Government is often represented by Police prosecutors, or by prosecutors working for the

Government department Ministry or department (also less commonly used secretariat, office, or directorate) are designations used by first-level executive bodies in the machinery of governments that manage a specific sector of public administration." Энцикло� ...

administering the law involved; for example, cases involving

tax A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...

are often prosecuted by lawyers working for the Inland Revenue Department.

References

Law of New Zealand {{NewZealand-law-stub