NCJ Number
175365
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 14 Issue: 4 Dated: November 1998 Pages: 384-397
Date Published
1998
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This analysis of transnational law enforcement focuses on the efforts of Canada and Colombia to engage in large-scale transnational drug law enforcement to demonstrate how issues of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and criminal justice traditions preclude the possibility for uniform laws and collaborative international law enforcement anytime soon.
Abstract
The more philosophical issues of sovereignty as well as the cultural and legal differences between countries make collaborative law enforcement extremely difficult. Each country has its own laws and its own way to enforce them. Complications arise with respect to constitutional law, as well as on procedural and criminal law levels. These differences generate different understandings of powers of investigation and continue throughout the entire criminal justice process. Many terms that North Americans take for granted prove to be problematic; even the term "law enforcement" as used in Canada does not have an equivalent in Colombian law. A solution may be to accept new definitions of sovereignty and new negotiated forms of multinational policing. Notes and 22 references (Author abstract modified)