¹ The standard paradigm for the accountability of police and other criminal justice agencies is articulated in a number of excellent books, see in particular: Goldsmith, A., Complaints Against the Police; The Trend to External Review (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991)Google Scholar, Goldsmith, A. & Lewis, C., Civilian Oversight of Policing; Governance, Democracy and Human Rights (Oxford: Hart, 2000)Google Scholar, Newburn, T. & Jones, T., Policing After the Act; Police Governance after the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994 (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1997)Google Scholar, Stenning, P., ed., Accountability for Criminal Justice; Selected Essays, (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See Johnston, L., Policing Britain; Risk, Security and Governance (Harlow: Longman, 2000)Google Scholar, Jones, T. & Newburn, T., Private Security and Public Policing (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998)Google Scholar and Rigakos, G., The New Parapolice; Risk Markets and Commodified Social Control (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Sheptycki, J.W.E., “Transnational Policing and the Makings of a Postmodern State” (1995) 35:4 Brit. J. Crim. 613 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of the ‘marketisation’ of security and policing.

³ Key studies here include: Anderson, M. et al. , Policing the European Union (Clarendon, Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar, Nadelmann, E., Cops Across Borders; the Internationalization of US Criminal Law Enforcement (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, Sheptycki, J.W.E., Issues in Transnational Policing (London: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar, Sheptycki, J.W.E., In Search of Transnational Policing (Aldershot: Avebury, 2003).Google Scholar See also ‘Policing Accountability in Europe’ (special issue) (2002) 12:4 Policing and Society 243.

⁴ Some interesting perspectives on globalisation and governance can be found in a collection of essays edited by Ericson, Richard V. & Stehr, Nico: Governing Modern Societies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See further: Held, David, Democracy and the Global Order; from the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1995)Google Scholar and Held, David & McGrew, Anthony, Globalisation/Anti-Globalisation (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).Google Scholar Gessner's, Volmar & Budak's, Ali Cem Emerging Legal Certainty: Empirical Studies on the Globalization of Law (Ashgate: Dartmouth, 1998)Google Scholar provides a wide-ranging collection of essays on the changing nature of legality under conditions of globalisation. The report of the Commission on Global Governance entitled Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) offers considered proposals to promote the security of peoples world-wide, equitably manage the global economy and strengthen the Rule of Law globally.

⁵ Marks', Susan The Riddle of All Constitutions (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar provides a strong theoretical disquisition regarding constitutional democracy under conditions of globalisation. The concept of the ‘transnational-state-system’ is discussed with regard to policing in Sheptycki, J. W. E., “Transnationalism, Crime Control and the European State System; a Review of the Literature” (1997) 7 International Criminal Justice Review 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ See David Nelken, In Search of Transnational Policing, supra note 3, at xix.

⁷ Interpol's global stature invites comparison with its regional competitor Europol. The relationship will be touched upon at relevant points throughout the paper.

⁸ See generally Anderson, M., Policing the World; Interpol and the Politics of International Police Co-operation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)Google Scholar and Sklair, L., Sociology of the Global System, (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).Google Scholar

⁹ Stenning, supra note 1 at 5.

¹⁰ Ibid. at 6.

¹¹ Ibid. at 7.

¹² See Goldsmith and, Goldsmith & Lewis, supra note 1.

¹³ Rigakos, supra note 3. See also, Law Commission of Canada, In Search of Security: the roles of public police and private agencies discussion paper (undated); Shearing, C., “A nodal Conception of Governance: Thoughts on a Policing Commission” (2001) 11:3–4 Policing and Society 259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Stenning, supra note 1 at 12.

¹⁵ See Sheptycki, J.W.E., “Political Culture and Structures of Social Control: Police Related Scandal in Low Countries in Comparative Perspective” (1999) 9:1 Policing and Society 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ See Sheptycki, supra note 3, especially the Introduction. See also Sheptycki, J. “Accountability Across the Policing Field: Towards a General Cartography of Accountability for Post-Modern Policing” (2002) 12:4 Policing and Society Special Issue on Police Accountability in Europe 323.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Held & McGrew, supra note 4 at 67.

¹⁸ Shearing, supra note 13.

¹⁹ See Anderson, M., Policing the World; Interpol and the Politics of International Police Co-operation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)Google Scholar, Bresler, F., Interpol (London: Mandarine, 1992)Google Scholar, Deflem, M., “Bureaucratization and Social Control: Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation” (2000) 34:3 Law & Soc'y Rev. 601 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Deflem, M., “The Logic of Nazification: The Case of the International Criminal Police Commission (“Interpol”)” (2002) 43:1 International Journal of Comparative Sociology 21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deflem, M., Policing World Society; Historical Foundations of International Police Co-operation (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, Fooner, M., Interpol; Issues In World Crime and International Criminal Justice (New York: Plenum Press, 1989)Google Scholar, Sheptycki, J.W.E., “Transnational Policing and the Makings of a Postmodern State” (1995) 35:4 Brit. J. Crim. 613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As good as this work is, none of it can claim to illuminate in any detail how Interpol actually functions on a day-to-day basis. Unlike most of the important democratic police agencies in the West, no researcher has ever actually studied its working methods at first hand. This is a call for the kind of field study perhaps best exemplified by the pioneering work of Michael Banton and William Westley. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the first step on the road to democratic accountability for Interpol would be just the sort of research access that Banton and Westley obtained in their studies of municipal police departments in the United Kingdom and the United States almost forty years ago. See Banton, M. The Policeman in the Community (London: Tavistock, 1964)Google Scholar and Westley, W., Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom, and Morality (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970).Google Scholar

²⁰ The Treaty of Versailles is often, but erroneously, said to be the treaty that ended the first World War, but in truth it is only the treaty that consolidated peace between Germany and the Allies. The treaty that set the peace terms between the allies and Austro-Hungary was the lesser-known Treaty of Saint Germain. See Hobsbawm, E., Age of Extremes; the Short 20^th century 1914–1991 (London: Abacus, 1995) at 31.Google Scholar

²¹ Anderson, supra note 19 at 40.

²² Deflem (2000 and 2002), supra note 19.

²³ Fooner, supra note 19 at 91.

²⁴ Bresler, supra note 19.

²⁵ Sheptycki, supra note 19.

²⁶ On the internationalisation of US law enforcement see Nadelmann, supra note 3. As Fooner (supra note 19 at 117) explains, when it comes to international police work, agencies often have recourse to other-than-Interpol channels. Thus US federal agencies “have their own external networks of agents: the FBI has legal attachés resident in a number of foreign embassies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service and other departments have agents assigned to foreign locations and reporting to their own departmental chiefs in Washington.” As it is with the USA, so it is with other countries that are active in transnational police co-operation.

²⁷ This number is always subject to change. Both Afghanistan and East Timor, for example, joined the roster at roughly the same time this paper was going to press.

²⁸ Sheptycki, supra note 19.

²⁹ For example, in 2002 a member of the Greek terrorist group November 17 was apprehended after an accidental explosion. This turned out to be the first step in bringing to an end an almost 30 year long history of terrorism which claimed the lives of many people, including the CIA station chief in Athens (in 1975) and a British Brigadier General who was a military attaché there (in 2002). Following interrogation of the detainee, Interpol became involved in the international traffic in intelligence about the group. Because officials from both countries had been assassinated, British and American police were already involved in the search for other members of the group. On July 7, 2002 The Daily Telegraph lead on the story announced that “Greece has credited Scotland Yard with the success of an operation against November 17, a terrorist group that has [had] the attention of agencies such as Interpol and the FBI for 30 years.” A spokesperson for the Greek government explained that their police strategy had been directed by British detectives. “We sealed off the area and conducted the search according to Scotland Yard methods (…) we have worked with FBI but Scotland Yard are better because of their experience with the IRA.”

³⁰ See, for example, the following: Anderson supra note 19 at 71, Bresler, supra note 19 at 131, Fooner, supra note 19 at 45. All of these observers make this claim.

³¹ Economic and Social Council, Resolution 288 (X) of 27 February 1950

³² The UN-centric view of global governance is only one model of the global system; see Held & McGrew, supra note 3 at 60–61.

³³ Held & McGrew, supra note 3 at 61.

³⁴ So-called Specialised Agencies are linked to the UN by a special accord de liaison, which is rather different than the co-operation agreement between the two organisations. An accord de liaison confers powers of coordination, whereas a co-operation agreement merely consolidates co-operation. A new co-operation agreement between Interpol and the UN was signed on July 8, 1997 and came into force following its approval by the Interpol General Assembly by virtue of Resolution AGN/66/RES/5 adopted at the 66th session (held in New Delhi in 1997). This replaced the previously existing Special Arrangement concluded with ECOSOC in May of 1971. The current co-operation agreement follows the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on October 22, 1996 of Resolution A/RES/51/1 which granted Interpol Observer status in the UN General Assembly. It defines the areas in which the two organisations should co-operate and the conditions for the exchange of information and documents. It opens the way for technical co-operation and joint action, and provides for reciprocal representation at meetings held by each organisation.

³⁵ U.K., H.C., Hansard (House of Commons Daily Debates) vol. 924, col. 344 (21 Jan 1977).

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/LegalMaterials/constitution/constitutionGenReg/constituion.asp#constitution.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ That is precisely where Held & McGrew place them, ibid. at 60.

⁴⁰ Anderson, supra note 19 at 69–70

⁴¹ Bresler, supra note 19 at 131

⁴² Economic and Social Council, Resolution 1579 (L) 288 of 3 June, 1971

⁴³ Reuter, P., Legal Problems concerning the ICPO-INTERPOL Constitution: Preliminary Observations (undated) [unpublished legal opinion, English Translation, archived at Interpol].Google Scholar Professor Reuter's legal opinion states, in part, that Interpol could “apparently be rightly called an international intergovernmental organisation, and indeed has been recognised as such by the United Nations Secretary General after some degree of understandable hesitation” (manuscript at 1–2). He states further that, while it is true that nearly all IGOs have been set up thorough formal treaties, under the principles of international law “it is even possible to conceive of an intergovernmental organisation being set up without a single written instrument, merely as the result of a series of precedents created by governments,” ibid. at 3–4. Professor Reuter conceded that this was not a complete answer to the question of Interpol's status because it did not consider the terms of constitutional law in all of the (very numerous) participating countries. However, his view was that, because the various parties to the Interpol organisation had “been applying its provisions for many years without ever having claimed that their commitment there under was unconstitutional” and because Interpol was “a centre of voluntary cooperation, exercising no powers which would conflict with national sovereignty” it would therefore “ill become a State to claim after so many years of successful activity that its commitment was unconstitutional and therefore invalid,” ibid. at 5–6. Were such questions to be raised, it “would be more legal and more seemly for it [the objecting state] to withdraw from the agreement,” ibid. at 6. Professor Reuter drew his legal opinion to a close by asking if there would be any benefit to raising Interpol's status to that of a fully-fledged and bona fide UN Specialised Agency. His answer was that, although the organisation might accrue a greater measure of prestige as a result, this had to be weighed against the loss of independence that this would bring since any such agreement would require full co-ordination with the administrative practices of the United Nations. He averred that participating States “would probably not adopt a unanimous position on such a transformation,” ibid. at 19.

⁴⁴ Quoted in Valleix, C., “Interpol” (1984) 3 R.G.D.I.P. 90 Google Scholar reprinted in (1985) International Criminal Police Review 97.

⁴⁵ Anderson, supra note 19 at 64; Fooner, supra note 19 at 61

⁴⁶ Under the terms of Article 26 of the Constitution which were adopted in 1990, external auditors are appointed on a three-yearly basis to conduct an external audit of the organisation's accounts and finances. Final drafts of the audit are presented to the Secretary General and the General Assembly.

⁴⁷ Anderson, supra, note 19 at 63.

⁴⁸ Fooner, supra note 19 at 184.

⁴⁹ Ibid. at 77.

⁵⁰ Anderson, supra note 19 at 66

⁵¹ Anderson et al., supra note 3 at 52. It might do to note that the efficiency and effectiveness of the CNIL in securing privacy and civil liberties interests of French citizens has also been criticised. See Raab, C., “Police Co-operation; the prospects for privacy” in Anderson, M. & den Boer, M., eds., Policing Across National Boundaries (London, Pinter 1994)Google Scholar As of this writing there is an internal debate within Interpol regarding the Rules relating to the processing of policing information and it is expected that new common security rules for Interpol's information system will be adopted in 2003.

⁵² Anderson et al., supra note 3 at 51. Except, of course that the UN Secretary General is almost entirely beholden to the Security Council. As Kofi Annan explained it, the office of UN Secretary General is “invested only with the power that a united Security Council may wish to bestow” Quoted in Shawcross, W. Deliver Us From Evil; Warlords and Peackeepers in a World of Endless Conflict (London: Bloomsbury, 2000) at 19.Google Scholar Further to this point, Anderson notes that Articles 29 and 30 of the Interpol Constitution establish the independence of the Secretary General (at 61). In general the S-G should represent the organisation, not a particular country. The Secretary General should neither solicit nor accept instructions from any government or authority outside the organisation and should abstain from any action which might be prejudicial to its international role. Also, under Article 30, each member country is expected to undertake to respect the exclusively international character of the duties of the Secretary General and the staff, and abstain from influencing them in the discharge of their duties.

⁵³ Stenning, supra note 1 at 5.

⁵⁴ See Fooner, supra note 19 at 80.

⁵⁵ Ibid. at 72.

⁵⁶ Bresler, supra note 19 at 190–91. It is not inappropriate to say that member police organisations retain nominal control over information in the Interpol databanks because the security of that information is moot. Some professional police agents have been critical of the inability of Interpol to maintain the integrity and secrecy of information. Thus, regardless of principles of proprietary control, questions have been raised about actual control. There is currently an internal debate within Interpol regarding these operating rules and there are plans to try to tighten them up, but it is too early to say if changes to the operating rules will significantly alter perceptions.

⁵⁷ Nadelmann, supra note 3 for a full account of the internationalisation of US law enforcement.

⁵⁸ For an overview of the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications system, see http://www.nlets.org/ (accessed on January 3, 2003).

⁵⁹ See Sheptycki, J.W.E., “Policing, Postmodernism and Transnationalisation” (1998) 38:3 Brit. J. Crim. 485 at 497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁰ The text of this speech is available at: http://www.interpol.int/Public/ICPO/speeches/Zaccardelli.asp.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Fooner, supra note 19 at 123–24.

⁶⁴ It is also worth noting that the United Kingdom maintains two sub-bureaux in the Caribbean region, one in Bermuda and the other in Grand Cayman. Also the Kingdom of the Netherlands maintains liaison officers in its dependencies and Interpol offices maintained in Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles are technically sub-ordinate to Dutch sovereignty.

⁶⁵ See Joubert, C. & Bevers, H. Schengen Investigated (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1996) at 29–31, 489–92.Google Scholar They are especially concerned to examine the extent to which such transnational police communications can be adequately governed by legal principles. See also Bigo, D., “Liaison officers in Europe; new officers in the European Security Field” in Sheptycki, J., ed., Issues in Transnational Policing (London: Routledge 2000).Google Scholar Bigo argues that transnational liaison officers are substantially unaffected by frameworks of legal accountability.

⁶⁶ U.K., H.C., “Home Affairs Committee Report on Practical Police Co-operation in the European Community,” 7^th report, HC 363–1 vol. 2 (1989–1990) 43.Google Scholar Elsewhere in this report it is remarked that Interpol's working methods were “bureaucratic and laborious” (vol. 1 at xxv).

⁶⁷ See Benyon, J. et al. , Police Co-operation in Europe; An Investigation (University of Leicester: Centre for the Study of Public Order, 1993)Google Scholar; Sheptycki, J.W.E., In Search of Transnational Policing (Aldershot: Avebury, 2002).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See den Boer, M., ed, (2002) 12:4 Policing and Society: Special Issue on Policing Accountability in Europe 243 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a wide-ranging debate on these issues.

⁶⁹ Fijnaut, C., The Internationalisation of Police Co-operation in Western Europe (Kluwer Law and Taxation Publishers: Deventer and Boston, 1993) at 10–12.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See Interpol Annual Reports for 2000 & 2001: http://www.interpol.int/.

⁷¹ Malcolm Anderson, supra note 19 at 61, states that the ambiguity of the Constitution was a deliberate ploy to ensure the informality of the organisation, and hence insulate it from (inter)national politics.

⁷² Interpol continued to liaise with US authorities through the offices of the US Treasury, despite the fact that at the time US law designated the FBI as the only official conduit for international police transactions.

⁷³ Bresler, supra note 19 at 127.

⁷⁴ For more details on these incidents consult Bresler, supra note 19 On the case of the Czech hijacking, see ibid. at 110–12 & 120–21, on the case of the request of the Cuban NCB for a red notice against former members of the Cuban police establishment, see ibid. at 127–28; and on the Black September attacks at Munich, see ibid. at 149–55. Incidentally, the Cuban instance throws up another possible deficiency of the Interpol Constitution, since there is no provision within it to withdraw membership. This is why Cuba remains a member of the organisation despite the fact that it has not paid any membership dues since 1959.

⁷⁵ Abraham Soafer, Legal Advisor to the US Department of State. Quoted in Anderson et al., supra note 3 at 227.

⁷⁶ Ibid. at 227–28.

⁷⁷ Ibid. at 231–33.

⁷⁸ See the Statewatch Observatory at http://www.statewatch.org/observatory2.htm for comprehensive analysis of these issues post 9–11. It is worth noting that the European Arrest Warrant also abolished the concepts of ‘dual criminality’ and ‘double jeopardy’. Indeed, the Eurowarrant does not even include a habeas corpus safeguard, prompting Sir Neil MacCormick, a Scottish Nationalist Member of the European Parliament and Professor of Public Law at Edinburgh University, to observe that policy makers in the EU had muddied the waters by equating allegations with hard proof. “They seem to think that prosecutors never make mistakes. Well they do. It's most urgent that we have remedies to prevent abuses of power.” Evans-Pritchard, Ambros “EU gets a new arrest warrant but safeguard is blocked” The Daily Telegraph (7 February 2002).Google Scholar The European Arrest Warrant will corne into full force in 2004, without the mechanism of the writ of habeas corpus.

⁷⁹ Bresier, supra note 19 at 184.

⁸⁰ Ibid. at 189–90.