Director of Public Prosecutions (Fiji)

The Director of Public Prosecutions was created under the Fiji Independence Act of 1970 and came into being that year. In 1990 and subsequently in 1997, the powers of the Office of the DPP were provided for in the Fiji Constitution, an entrenched document and the supreme law of the nation. Hence, the Office of the DPP is independent from the government and the police, and therefore answerable to the public at large due to its constitutional responsibility.

Functions

The function of the Office of the DPP is to advise the police and the other Government Departments on the sufficiency of evidence for prosecutions, to conduct prosecutions of at all levels of Courts and to appear in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court for Criminal Appeals. The prosecutors have no investigative function. In Fiji, the police have an investigative function.

In 2014, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions drew up a prosecutors guideline.^[1]

References