Crime, International Response To

Various institutions in the international community respond to crime, because criminal activities or their consequences sometimes spill across national jurisdictional borders. The international dimensions of certain crimes, such as organized crime, the drug trade, and terrorism, are the motivation for responses by a plurality of institutions in politics, law, and law enforcement at the international level. Although the current era presents an unprecedented high degree of internationalization in many areas of social life, international responses to crime have a long history.

The international control of crime has historically taken shape since at least the nineteenth century, when the governments of large national states sought to consolidate political power. The earliest efforts to coordinate crime control on an international level targeted, in particular, the political opponents of autocratic regimes, mostly in Europe, where socialists, anarchists, and communists as well as liberal democrats were subject to international police actions. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, these political efforts led to the elaboration of international police operations that were oriented toward nonpolitical crimes, such as the international trade in prostitutes and the rendition of international fugitives who had committed murder, theft, and other violations of criminal law.

Along with the historical shift from political offenses to criminal activities developed the formation of a veritable international organization of police. The creation of an international police organization emerged from international policing operations that national law enforcement agencies unilaterally executed by stationing covert police agents abroad. Beyond such transnational actions, law enforcement institutions until the early twentieth century also initiated cooperation with foreign organizations based on a specific need that arose during a particular investigation. Typically, such cooperation remained restricted to the law enforcement agencies of two nations.

Gradually, officials decided to organize international cooperation in a multilateral organization. During the early twentieth century, several efforts were taken to create an international police organization, but none was successful until the formation in 1923 of the International Criminal Police Commission, the organization known today as Interpol. This international organization brought police agencies together from many nations on a permanent basis to exchange information on criminal suspects via regularly organized meetings; shared technologies of communication, such as printed publications and a radio system; and created a central headquarters through which police could share information among the member agencies. Today, this model of information exchange among police through a central headquarters is still the preferred method of collaboration, although the technologies of communication have progressed to include Internetbased communications systems.

Besides cooperation in a multilateral organization, international police activities today also include many other forms. Most common, especially among the police agencies of powerful nations, is a system of international liaisons or legal attachés, whereby law enforcement agents locate abroad. Despite the fact that Interpol now counts 186 member agencies, much [Page 331]international police cooperation also continues to take place on a temporary basis between the law enforcement agencies of a smaller number of nations, such as joint investigation teams along the borders of two neighboring countries.

The institutions that exist in the international community to control crime are not restricted to police agencies, as national governments and international governing bodies have also responded to the growing internationalization of crime. National governments cooperate with one another primarily in the form of extradition agreements and other formal bilateral accords on criminal matters. An extradition agreement specifies the conditions under which officials from one country can hand over a person, suspected or convicted of a crime, to another country asserting legal authority over the person. Bilateral accords between governments in criminal matters typically specify the need for enhanced cooperation and standardization of legal arrangements on various crimes.

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