Legal research

Since 2011, the Bergen Research Foundation (BFS) has supported a long-term initiative in criminal justice research at the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen (UiB). BFS has supported the Faculty’s initiative in this field through two major projects.

The functionality of the criminal justice system

The ambition of the project was to provide new insight into how the police, courts and the penal system fill different functions in the criminal justice system. The system is intended to both prevent and combat crime, but encounters ever increasing challenges, particularly with respect to efficient crime prevention.

The project’s overriding goal has been to stimulate dialogue and the exchange of experience and knowledge between academia and actors in the criminal justice system. A range of different seminars and conferences have been held – including a large international police law conference. The objective has been for this dialogue to lead to better research and higher quality in the criminal justice system in the long term.

The research initiative has been affiliated with existing research projects in the criminal justice community at the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen, and has contributed to positive synergies for one of the Faculty’s strongest research communities.

Police and Prosecution Law

The project builds on the functionality of the criminal justice system initiative and will focus on two areas:

• The police’s tasks in operational police work
• The police and prosecution authorities’ tasks in criminal proceedings

The project has a five-year timeframe and is co-funded by BFS, the National Police Directorate and the Faculty of Law at UiB

Gert Johan Kjelby – about the project:

– Its main objective is to fill knowledge gaps in jurisprudence by generating research on the legal conditions for the police and prosecution authorities’ performance of their social mission