Dichotomy of non-credible police evidence in the previous proceedings and prosecution powerlessness in Serbia: The case study of bribe-taking and money laundering

Deciding to write, for the first time in this country, an article on dichotomy of non-credible police evidence in the previous proceedings and prosecution powerlessness, we had no presentiment how much care it would cause us. During the writing we had the issues regarding the contextualization and terminological determinants. As it turned out, recognizing, separating and using the method of correlation between the lack of evidence in police investigations and prosecution capacity/incapacity was an unexpectedly big challenge and an overly complex theoretical demand for a paper of this scale. However, we are neither the first nor the only ones to face this issue. Every attempt to make a theoretical contribution to understanding this term in both the legal and criminological theory has faced a number of issues difficult to be solved. On the other hand, it does not mean at all that attempts at scientific pondering and exploration of this important criminological and legal scientific problem, as well as attempts at defining the scientific causality of those aforementioned attempts, are theoretically meaningless or impossible. The fact that such a feat is difficult, that these institutions are illusive or multidimensional, shows how the theoretical knowledge used to interpret them has certain weaknesses, i.e. that during scientific research we are faced with many limitations and unknowns in our criminalistics and legal theory. By solving theoretical problems associated with the lack of evidence and its impact on prosecution powerlessness, we could open the way for understanding the other, similar or related phenomena and processes in law and criminalistics. Therefore, it is the primary purpose of this paper to explore the ranges of prosecution capacity/incapacity through the lack of evidence in police investigations regarding bribe-taking and money laundering. We do not believe we can offer a significant scientific and theoretical contribution if our research remains isolated, without arousing other scientific discussions on this topic. Our attention is directed towards the search for a different and somewhat innovative approach which could eventually lead to some new insights into our criminal and legal thought on the evidence and its impact on prosecution capacity or incapacity.