The Acquittal - A great Unknown of the Criminal Justice System - An Empirical Study of the Practical Meaning of Acquittals after Pretrial Detention and its Causes -

正如我们在研究计划的第一次提案中精心描绘的那样，无罪释放-刑事司法系统的一个未知数？(工程项目编号KI 689/5-1)，经验犯罪学的科学图景缺乏对无罪释放的频率和重要性的区分分析。该研究小组的目标是缩小这一差距。需要澄清的是，无罪释放更多的是不可避免的司法摩擦损失(Merbreier，1970)，还是刑事司法系统可以避免的错误。对执法统计数据的分析在首次提案中如期进行。相比之下，对法庭文件的分析大大推迟，因为国家统计局和检察官S办公室的处理工作出现了延误。这些拖延导致了意想不到的情况，即对法庭文件的调查要到2016年春季才能完成。由于法庭档案分析的结果将构成计划中的专家约谈的基础，因此，只有在研究小组完成对约300起审前羁押无罪的诉讼的调查后，才能进行专家约谈。因此，面谈是为了讨论结果并回答由此产生的公开问题。因此，除了继续和合并法院档案分析外，追加经费期限的重点在于实现和评价专家约谈。现有的临时结果表明，研究计划的继续让预期对研究做出重大贡献。

As we carved out elaborately in the first-time proposal of the research-program The Acquittal - an Unknown of the Criminal Justice System? (Project no. KI 689/5-1), the scientific landscape of empirical criminology lacks in a differentiating analysis of the frequency and the importance of the acquittal. The research-group aims at closing this gap. It is to be clarified if an acquittal is more of an inevitable frictional loss of justice (Merbreier, 1970), or an avoidable error of the criminal justice system. The analysis of the statistics of law enforcement was conducted as scheduled in the first-time proposal. By contrast, the analysis of court files was considerably postponed due to delayed handling on the part of the Statistical State Offices on the one hand and the public prosecutor´s offices on the other. These delays led to the unexpected circumstance that the investigation of the court files could not have been finished until spring 2016. As the results of the court file-analysis are to form the basis of the planned expert interviews, those can only be conducted if the research team completed the investigation of about 300 proceedings of acquittals with pre-trial custody. The interviews are hence to discuss the results and to answer open questions resulting from them. Besides the continuation and consolidation of the court-file-analysis, the focus of the additionally requested funding period therefore lies on the realization and evaluation of the expert interviews. The existing temporary results indicate that the continuation of the research-program let expect to contribute significantly to research.