Defending core values: Human rights and the extradition of fugitives
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Author | Abraham L Newman,Asif Efrat |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319898231 |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Defending core values: Human rights
and the extradition of fugitives
Asif Efrat
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
Abraham L Newman
Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract
Are states willing to overlook human rights violations to reap the fruits of international cooperation? Existing research
suggests that this is often the case: security, diplomatic, or commercial gains may trump human rights abuse by
partners. We argue, however, that criminal-justice cooperation might be obstructed when it undermines core values
of individual freedoms and human rights, since the breach of these values exposes the cooperating state to domestic
political resistance and backlash. To test our argument, we examine extradition: a critical tool for enforcing criminal
laws across borders, but one that potentially threatens the rights of surrendered persons, who could face physical
abuse, unfair trial, or excessive punishment by the foreign legal system. We find support for our theoretical
expectation through statistical analysis of the surrender of fugitives within the European Union as well as surrenders
to the United States: greater respect for human rights correlates with the surrender of fewer persons. A case study of
Britain confirms that human rights concerns may affect the willingness to extradite. Our findings have important
implications for debates on the relationship between human rights and foreign policy as well as the fight against
transnational crime.
Keywords
criminal justice, European Union, extradition, human rights, United States
Introduction
Are states willing to compromise their commitment to
human rights for the sake of international cooperation?
Scholars have often answered this question in the affir-
mative, suggesting that political and economic interests
tend to take precedence over human rights. In order to
reap diplomatic or commercial gain, governments might
overlook the human rights violations of their partners.
For example, several studies suggest that human rights
exert a limited effect, if any, on arms transfers and the
allocation of foreign aid (Neumayer, 2003; Carey, 2007;
Lebovic & Voeten, 2009; Erickson, 2011; Schulze,
Pamp & Thurner, 2017).
This article examines the impact of human rights on
cooperation in an area that has received little attention
from IR scholars: criminal justice. Cooperation among
states in the investigation, prosecution, and punishment
of crimes goes back centuries but has increased in impor-
tance in the current era: ‘Bad’ actors – from organized
crime syndicates, through human and drug traffickers, to
transnational terrorists – take advantage of globalization
to commit crimes (Andreas & Nadelmann, 2006). To
curb cross-border crime, states assist each other in imple-
menting and enforcing their domestic criminal laws.
Such cooperation ranges from the sharing of evidence
(known as ‘mutual legal assistance’) and the extradition
of criminal suspects to the transfer of criminal proceed-
ings and the freezing or seizure of assets (UNODC,
2009; Efrat & Newman, 2017).
From a functionalist perspective, criminal-justice
cooperation can easily appear efficient, as it helps to
Corresponding author:
asif@idc.ac.il
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(4) 581–596
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319898231
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prevent or punish crime. In this article, we develop an
alternative account that explains why states may refuse to
cooperate against crime. We argue that an important
cause for such reluctance rests in concerns that the coop-
erative endeavor might undermine core societal values.
The core values that criminal-justice cooperation
impinges on include individual freedoms and human
rights, as well as legal fairness. States more committed
to these values are less likely to cooperate for fear of
breaching them. Such a breach might expose the coop-
erating state to domestic political resistance and backlash
due to the undermining of fundamental normative
principles.
To test this argument, we examine the extradition of
wanted persons: a central feature of international crimi-
nal cooperation. Extradition is the surrender by a state
(the requested state) of a person present in its territory to
another state (the requesting state) that seeks that person
either to prosecute them or to enforce a sentence already
handed down by its courts (UNODC, 2009: 143).
While the mechanism of extradition has a long history,
its use has grown in this era of burgeoning transnational
crime, with thousands of requests made annually world-
wide covering a broad array of crimes: from terrorism
and drug trafficking through homicide to robbery and
fraud (Nadelmann, 1993; Pyle, 2001). Extradition
stands on the principle ‘that it is in the interest of all
civilized communities that offenders should not be
allowed to escape justice by crossing national borders
and that States should facilitate the punishment of crim-
inal conduct’ (Home Office, 2011: 20).
While a crucial tool for fighting crime, extradition
potentially threatens the rights of surrendered persons,
who could face physical abuse, unfair trial, or excessive
punishment by the foreign legal system. To assess
whether such human rights concerns carry weight and,
in fact, constrain the extradition process, we examine
extradition patterns within the European Union under
the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). To verify the gen-
eralizability of our findings, we analyze data on the extra-
dition of suspected criminals to the United States.
Narrative evidence of the recent British debate on extra-
dition policy sheds additional light on the causal
mechanism. Our findings across the different types of
evidence point to a strong relationship between core
values and international criminal cooperation: countries
that exhibit greater respect for human rights tend to
extradite fewer individuals.
Our findings advance the literature on the interna-
tional effects of domestic legal systems and norms. Exist-
ing research tends to focus on how domestic norms
influence treaty behavior or cooperation with interna-
tional courts (Mitchell & Powell, 2011). We, however,
turn attention to how differences in domestic norms
shape actual patterns of cooperation against crime. Our
argument and findings also offer tangible evidence of the
impact of human rights on foreign policy and interna-
tional cooperation. While in various areas governments
appear willing to trade human rights respect for the ben-
efits of cooperation, such compromise turns out to be
harder in the area of criminal justice. In this context, at
least, the commitment to human rights appears to be an
actual constraint on cooperation rather than lip service
(Hafner-Burton, 2005; Tomz & Weeks, 2020).
International criminal cooperation and
extradition
States seeking to combat crimes are often hamstrung by
their transnational nature. As criminals and crimes trans-
cend traditional notions of territorial jurisdiction, police
and prosecutors increasingly find evidence and suspects
scattered or hidden across borders (UNODC, 2010).
Without international cooperative action, the rule of law
might be hollowed out. Responding to this challenge,
governments employ mechanisms for international crim-
inal cooperation. These mechanisms address the differ-
ent elements of the criminal-justice proc ess: from the
gathering of evidence through the criminal prosecution
and trial to the punishment (UNODC, 2012).
Extradition is perhaps the best-known of those
mechanisms, and it plays a key role in the suppression
of transnational crime (Nadelmann, 1993; Magnuson,
2011). Extradition is the formal legal process by which
persons accused or convicted of crime are surrendered
from one state to another for prosecution or punish-
ment. While comprehensive global statistics concerning
extradition are unavailable, a UN survey of 35 countries
found some 3,000 extradition requests made in 2012
(UN, 2014: 27), excluding those processed through the
EU extradition scheme: the European Arrest Warrant.
During the period 2005–11, nearly 80,000 extradition
requests were made among EU members through the
EAW (Carrera, Guild & Hernanz, 2013).
Policymakers worldwide consider extradition a vital
tool in confronting criminality, and it has played a par-
ticularly central role in the US fight against organized
crime and drug trafficking. Since the 1970s, the United
States has filed an increasing number of extradition
requests (Nadelmann, 1993: 817–818). As a result, drug
traffickers and kingpins from Colombia, Mexico, and
other countries ended up in US courtrooms. Perhaps the
582 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 57(4)
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