Abstract
The exportation of the US war on drugs to the international arena has relied on the deployment of various strategies designed to reduce the supply of illegal drugs to the American market, and to hold perpetrators in foreign countries accountable. This paper focuses on the use of extradition in facilitating the prosecution of foreign nationals, and, through a case study of Jamaica, examines some of the problems inherent in the process of arresting and transferring drug offenders from countries within Latin America and the Caribbean to “face justice” in American courts.
Highlights
Few American “wars” have been as protracted or as vigorously fought as the war on drugs
Focusing primarily on Latin American and Caribbean countries, this paper examines various mechanisms that have been established for the arrest of alleged drug traffickers in their countries or other third countries for extradition to, and trial, in the United States
The 1988 United Nations Convention laid the foundation for the Government of the United States to introduce the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), an annual country-by-country report that assesses the efforts to attack all aspects of the international drug trade, including chemical control, and money laundering
Summary
Few American “wars” have been as protracted or as vigorously fought as the war on drugs. The paper explores various legal mechanisms such as domestic statutes and case law both in the United States and cooperating countries, the bilateral agreements, and other legal and practical or informal arrangements surrounding the extradition of suspected drug traffickers to the United States. The discussion of these issues includes the socio-political concerns around the arrests in the extraditing countries—the nature of various political influences or pressures brought to bear on the extraditing countries-and the official and unofficial responses to these pressures. The paper examines viable options to extradition and charts the way forward for increased cooperation in the war on drugs
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