An International Perspective

Abstract

Individual countries have always jealously guarded their right to devise and implement their own criminal justice and penal policies. What went on in one nation state was regarded as their business and no one else’s. In today’s age of faster communications and population movements such degrees of sovereignty become challenged, and not least when those communications and movements involve criminal activity that transcends national frontiers. The police of different jurisdictions need to co-operate and that co-operation includes the exchange of information and the exchange of criminal records.