International Policing

Drugs

The phenomenon of illegal drugs trafficking has been a major factor in the internationalization of many law enforcement national policies and agencies, influencing its international work and dimensions.

There are some crititics about the effectivity of the United States efforts in the production and distribution of illegal drugs.

International Policing and the United States

Because often United States police forces would prefer to be unilaterally involved (or only in limited cooperative form) in international policing activities, the police forces of other nations may decide to prefer to work (sometimes with resentment) without participation from U.S. police, which in turn may create a cause for U.S. law enforcement officials to avoid broad cooperation. An example of this is the difficulties of cooperation in Interpol, since sometimes U.S. police members have no trust in several foreign governments.

“(P)olice agencies from the United States play a role more significant than police from any other nation. Historically, U.S. law enforcement was by and large insulated from international activities and cooperation with police from other nations, but since World War II and, particularly, over the past few decades, U.S. police institutions have taken on a dominant role in international operations”(1)

“U.S. participation in formally established multinational structures of police cooperation is not very well developed. Typically, police agencies from the United States tend to prefer unilaterally planned and executed international police work and, to a somewhat lesser extent, bilateral cooperation strategies. Among the exceptions is the participation by the United States in … Interpol.(2)

In regard to operations for the protection of the United States Border (specially with Mexico), they are “especially oriented at the prevention of smuggling, the entry of illegal aliens into the United States, and the apprehension of smugglers and illegal aliens after they entered the country.” (3) The most important police strategies in border control “since the 1990s has been to increase the number of (federal and local) agents stationed at the borders” (4) and the use of “advanced technologies, such as computerized fingerprint tracking systems, as well as the deployment of military forces in the fight against border crimes.”(5)

These activities of border control and its expansion “since the 1980s has almost exclusively implied an enhancement of the protection of the U.S. economy from a Mexican invasion of illegal workers, targeting the U.S.-Mexican border as a ‘war zone.’”(6)

The Future of International Policing

“Unilaterally enacted police operations that are prevalent in U.S. international police operations are an expression of the relatively high degree of autonomy of U.S. police agencies in planning and instigating such operations, irrespective even of political and legal considerations. Relatedly, an emphasis is placed in international police work on principles of efficiency, such as direct police-to-police communications, that may operate in international activities irrespective of concerns related to legality, justice, and civil and human rights. The efficiency-oriented nature of international police activities underscores the perspective that police institutions are relatively autonomous in setting their own agendas on the basis of acquired knowledge and expertise in matters of international crime. This process of achieving a high degree of autonomy in international policing does not mean that participating police institutions can successfully absolve themselves from concerns over legality and rights, but instead that they are subject to evaluations in moral terms precisely because of their primary reliance on efficiency standards.” (7)

Notes and References

1. Deflem, Mathieu. 2005. “International Policing -The Role of the United States.” Pp. 808-812 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology, edited by Richard A. Wright and J. Mitchell Miller. New York: Routledge.
2. Id.
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Id.
6. Id.
7. Id.

See also

• United States Drug Enforcement Administration
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Bureau of Customs and Border Protection
• Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services
• USA Patriot Act
• Interpol
• International Policing

Further Reading

• Deflem, Mathieu. 2001. “International Police Cooperation in Northern America.” Pp. 71-98 in International Police Cooperation: A World Perspective, edited by Daniel J. Koenig and Dilip K. Das. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Deflem, Mathieu. 2002. Policing World Society: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• Deflem, Mathieu. 2003. “The Boundaries of International Cooperation: Problems and Prospects of U.S.-Mexican Policing.” In Corruption, Police, Security & Democracy, edited by Menachem Amir and Stanley Einstein. Huntsville, TX: Office of International Criminal Justice.
• Dunn, Timothy J. 1996. The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992. Austin, TX: CMAS Books.
• Koenig, Daniel J., and Dilip K. Das, eds. 2001. International Police Cooperation: A World Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• Marenin, Otwin. 2001. “United States International Policing Activities: An Overview.” Pp. 297-322 in International Police Cooperation: A World Perspective, edited by Daniel J. Koenig and Dilip K. Das. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
• McDonald, William F., ed. 1997. Crime and Law Enforcement in the Global Village. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing.
• Nadelmann, Ethan A. 1993. Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• International Law Enforcement (with Michael D. Bayer). Pp. Pp. 1168-1173 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, edited by Jay S. Albanese. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
• Interpol. Pp. 956-958 in The Encyclopedia of Global Studies, edited by Helmut K. Anheier and Mark Juergensmeyer. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012.
• Policing. Pp. 1163-1165 in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by George Ritzer. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• International Drug Agencies. With Shannon McDonnough. In Encyclopedia of Drug Policy, edited by Mark Kleiman and James Hawdon. Sage Publications, 2011.
• International Law Enforcement Organizations. With Shannon McDonough. Pp. 127-148 in Comparative and International Policing, Justice, and Transnational Crime, edited by Sesha Kethineni. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010.
• Interpol. Pp. 179-181 in The Sage Dictionary of Policing, eds A. Wakefield and J. Fleming. London: Sage, 2009.
• International Money Laundering Control: Law Enforcement Issues. With Kyle Irwin. Pp. 243-246 in Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, edited by Frank G. Shanty. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008.
• Interpol. Pp. 198-199 in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, edited by Peter N. Stearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Crime, International Response to. Pp. 330-331 in Encyclopedia of Law and Society: American and Global Perspectives, edited by David S. Clark. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007.
• International Policing. Pp. 701-705 in The Encyclopedia of Police Science, Third Edition, edited by Jack R. Greene. New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Extradition, International. With Kyle Irwin. Pp. 352-354 in Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, edited by Otis H. Stephens, Jr., John M. Scheb II, and Kara E. Stooksbury. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
• International Policing –The Role of the United States. Pp. 808-812 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology, edited by Richard A. Wright and J. Mitchell Miller. New York: Routledge, 2005.
• The Boundaries of International Cooperation: Problems and Prospects of U.S.-Mexican Police Relations. Pp. 93-122 in Corruption, Police, Security & Democracy, edited by Menachem Amir & Stanley Einstein. Huntsville, TX: Office on International Criminal Justice, 2004.
• International Police Cooperation in Northern America: A Review of Practices, Strategies, and Goals in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Pp. 71-98 in International Police Cooperation: A World Perspective, edited by Daniel J. Koenig and Dilip K. Das. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001.
• Comparative Criminal Justice. With Amanda J. Swygart. Pp. 51- 68 in the Handbook of Criminal Justice Administration, edited by T. DuPont-Morales, M. Hooper, and J. Schmidt. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2001.
• Smuggling. With Kelly Henry-Turner. pp. 473-475 in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior, Clifton D. Bryant, Editor-in-Chief. Volume 2, Crime and Juvenile Delinquency. Francis & Taylor Publishers, 2000.
• International Criminal Justice on the Internet. Inter-Section, Newsletter of the International Section of the ACJS, Summer 1998, pp. 1-4.
• Related book reviews: The New International Policing, by B.K. Greener. Global Change, Peace and Security 2010; Policing Paris, by Clifford Rosenberg. International Review of Social History 2007; Policing International Society: Views from the United States. Review essay on Cops Across Borders by Ethan A. Nadelmann, and Crime and Law Enforcement in the Global Village edited by William F. McDonald. Police Forum 1997.
• History of Technology in Policing. With Stephen Chicoine. Pp. 2269-2277 in Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, edited by Gerben Bruinsma and David Weisburd. Berlin: Springer, 2014.
• Interpol. Pp. 1192-1193 in The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by George Ritzer. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• Police. In The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, edited by Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
• Bureaucratization. Pp. 14-16 in The Sage Dictionary of Policing, edited by A. Wakefield and J. Fleming. London: Sage, 2009.
• Policing. Pp. 970-973 in Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte. New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Book Symposium: Policing World Society. Law Enforcement Executive Forum 5(4):63-82, July 2005.International Police Cooperation –History of. Pp. 795-798 in The Encyclopedia of Criminology, edited by Richard A. Wright and J. Mitchell Miller. New York: Routledge, 2005.
• The Handbook of Transnational Crime and Justice, edited by Philip Reichel. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2005.
• The Logic of Nazification: The Case of the International Criminal Police Commission (“Interpol”). International Journal of Comparative Sociology 43(1):21-44, 2002.
• Bureaucratization and Social Control: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation. Law & Society Review 34(3):601-640, 2000.
• International Policing in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Police Union of German States, 1851-1866. International Criminal Justice Review 6:36-57, 1996.
• Policing Katrina: Managing Law Enforcement in New Orleans. With Suzanne Sutphin. Policing 3(1):41-49, 2009.
• Policing the Pearl: Historical Transformations of Law Enforcement in Hong Kong. With Richard Featherstone, Yunqing Li, and Suzanne Sutphin. International Journal of Police Science and Management 10(3):349-356, 2008.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pp. 360-361 in Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties, edited by O.H. Stephens, Jr., J.M. Scheb II, and K.E. Stooksbury. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006.
• Law Enforcement and Computer Security Threats and Measures. With J. Eagle Shutt. In The Handbook of Information Security, Volume 2, edited by Hossein Bidgoli. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

Law Enforcement in British Colonial Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Imperial Policing in Nyasaland, the Gold Coast, and Kenya. Police Studies 17(1):45-68, 1994.