Transnational policing between national political regimes and human rights norms: The case of the Interpol Red Notice system
| Author | Serdar San |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13624806221105280 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Transnational policing between
national political regimes and
human rights norms: The case
of the Interpol Red Notice
system
Serdar San
University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
Current transnational policing mechanisms such as Interpol appear to reproduce author-
itarianism-like actions in democratic contexts by helping to undermine the rights and
freedoms of individuals targeted by non-democratic regimes. Through an in depth exam-
ination of the cases of Turkish and Russian police, this article seeks to explain the pos-
sible motives of the law enforcement institutions of democratic states in executing the
questionable Interpol Red Notice requests by authoritarian regimes based on the exist-
ing theoretical debates in the literature on international policing. It explores three fac-
tors that foster policing cooperation between democratic and authoritarian states: 1) an
aspired depoliticization of international policing that facilitates cooperation among states
with different national and ideological outlooks; 2) an occupational culture that
encourages professional support and solidarity among policing agents that transcends
national rivalries; and 3) state cooperation against threats posed by the planning and
conduct of international crime.
Keywords
authoritarian regimes, international policing, Interpol, Russia, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Serdar San, Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto, 14 Queen’s Park Cres W,
Toronto, ON M5S 3K9, Canada.
Email: serdar.san@mail.utoronto.ca
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2022, Vol. 26(4) 601–619
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13624806221105280
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Introduction
Over the last few decades, in response to the emergence of transnational threats such as
organized crime and international terrorism, there has been a significant growth in
policing activities that transcend national boundaries. With the rapid development of
cross-border policing practices, recent decades have also witnessed an expansion of inter-
national policing bodies to help national police services suppress the growing problem of
transnational criminal activities. The International Criminal Police Organization,
Interpol, remains ‘the best-known global policing brand’in this respect (Bowling and
Sheptycki, 2015: 144). Interpol facilitates transnational police cooperation and informa-
tion sharing among national police agencies with the help of its international criminal
databases and its other official mechanisms. These include the Red Notice system,
which consists of requests sent to law enforcement agencies of other member states
that seek ‘to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender or
similar legal action’(Interpol, 2021b). Recent technological improvements, such as the
introduction of Interpol’s I-24/7 web-based information sharing system or the launch
of the I-link program, which now allows member states to upload ‘draft Red Notices’
immediately visible to the police of other states, have made it much easier for govern-
ments to circulate such requests rapidly and globally (Apuzzo, 2019; Lemon, 2019).
Interpol issued 13,377 and 11,094 Red Notices in 2019 and 2020 respectively, compared
with a mere 1277 in 2002 (Interpol, 2021b; Schenkkan and Linzer, 2021: 12).
While Interpol and its cooperation mechanisms have been effective tools in policing
transnational crimes, authoritarian states have increasingly taken advantage of the Red
Notice system to pursue their critics abroad (Langille and Mégret, 2018; Lemon, 2019;
Schenkkan and Linzer, 2021; Tsourapas, 2021; United States Department of State,
2021). For instance, Russia alone is responsible for a staggering 38% of all public Red
Notices in the world (Schenkkan and Linzer, 2021: 28). Tajikistan, a Central Asian
authoritarian state that accounts for 0.12% of the world’s population, had issued 2528
Red Notices by 2017—2.3% of the total in circulation at the time (Lemon, 2019).
Turkey, following the failed military coup attempt of 15 July 2016, reportedly attempted
to upload 60,000 names onto Interpol’s notification system (Russell, 2018).
1
Several
examples over time show authoritarian regimes have appeared to secure the cooperation
of democratic states in executing their dubious arrest requests through the Red Notice
mechanism. Drawing on existing debates in the literature on international policing, this
article seeks to investigate what accounts for the generally cooperative response of
western governments to Red Notices from authoritarian regimes through an empirical
case study of Turkey and Russia—two autocratic regimes that appeared to turn to
Interpol over the past decade for help in pursuing their opponents living or travelling
abroad.
This article advances three arguments as to why democratic states accommodate these
dubious Red Notice requests by authoritarian regimes. Part of the explanation is a histor-
ical shift towards depoliticization in the international cooperation on policing—achieved
through the bureaucratization and increased professionalization of police organizations—
which has eventually shaped the world’s international policing architecture largely
without regard to major differences in the political institutions and judicial integrity of
602 Theoretical Criminology 26(4)
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