Combating International Crime

This book maps the practicalities and challenges in making cross-border law enforcement work. Addressing the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crime or criminality which is conducted in more than one country, it provides a professional assessment and describes the essential ingredients of international law enforcement cooperation.

This work examines the challenges posed by transnational crime and the steps being taken by the international community to meet these challenges. It offers comprehensive analysis of different forms of transnational crime and the various responses that are being developed.

The realities of international law enforcement are widely misunderstood and generally mystifying to the uninitiated. Combating cross border crime is a dynamic aspect of criminal justice that is becoming increasingly complex and directly relevant to national and local level policing. Unfortunately, most practitioners and policy-makers are unaware of the challenges involved in investigating and prosecuting criminals across frontiers. Professional experience of combating international crime is still restricted to relatively few. Globalization and technological advances have removed a great many obstacles to trade, but they have also facilitated access to new markets for criminal entrepreneurs whilst offering a reduced risk of detection and prosecution. International criminal activity has always had a significant and direct, if somewhat obscured, impact on the national and local crime picture. Without effective or coordinated cross-border strategies to redress the balance, the risk and damage caused by international criminal activity will continue to increase unabated. Combating International Crime maps the practicalities and challenges in making cross-border law enforcement work. Addressing the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crime or criminality which is conducted in more than one country, it provides a professional assessment and describes the essential ingredients of international law enforcement cooperation. It identifies the needs, implications and consequences of a comprehensive strategy against international crime and contains case studies by way of illustration and example.

This edited collection provides an in-depth account of the history of key developments in transnational criminal law. While the history of international criminal law is now a much written about topic, the origins of most modern transnational criminal laws are not well understood. Histories of Transnational Criminal Law provides for the first time a set of legal histories of state efforts to combat and cooperate against transnational crime. With contributions from a group of word-leading experts, this edited volume traverses a range of topics, beginning with the normative, intellectual, and institutional histories of transnational criminal law. It then moves to the histories of specific transnational crimes ranging across eras from piracy to cybercrime, and finishes by examining jurisdiction, modes of liability, different forms of procedural cooperation, and the predicament of the individual in transnational criminal law. The book highlights specific issues and how they have been resolved, in the loose assemblage of norms, institutions, and practices that constitutes transnational criminal law.

Contributors offer a wide range of challenges to commonly-held views on transnational crime and approaches to fighting it, suggesting that current international policies follow an American model that exaggerates its threat out of proportion.

Since the end of the Cold War, states have become increasingly engaged in the suppression of transnational organised crime. The existence of the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime and its Protocols demonstrates the necessity to comprehend this subject in a systematic way. Synthesizing the various sources of law that form this area of growing academic and practical importance, International Law and Transnational Organised Crime provides readers with a thorough understanding of the key concepts and legal instruments in international law governing transnational organised crime. The volume analyses transnational organised crime in consideration of the most relevant subareas of international law, such as international human rights and the law of armed conflict. Written by internationally recognized scholars in international and criminal law as well as respected high-level practitioners, this book is a useful tool for lawyers, public agents, and academics seeking straightforward and comprehensive access to a complex and significant topic.

Provides a key textbook on the nature of international and transnational crimes and the delivery of justice for crime control and prevention.