ABSTRACT
Charles Cottu was a counsellor of the Royal Court of Paris, and Secretary-General to the Royal Society of Prisons. In 1820, he was sent by the French government to observe the workings of the English criminal courts. Cottu was also confounded by the English reliance on private victims to pros ecute criminal cases. Cottu was particularly struck by a couple of features of the English system. He remarked, first, on what he thought was the indifference of English courts to the motive and circumstances surrounding the commission of the crime. Only after circa 1850 did the state begin to assume responsibility for prosecuting crime, as professional police forces gradually took on the role of initiating and managing prosecutions.
