Tradeoffs in Undercover Investigations: A Comparative Perspective
Posted: 13 Dec 2002
Abstract
Different countries vary significantly in their attitudes to the legitimacy of undercover investigations and in their approaches to regulating them. This review essay examines two wide-ranging anthologies that have collected the contributions of legal scholars, sociologists, criminologists, police officials and policymakers in an effort to illuminate the differing national contours of the debate about undercover policing: Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective, Cyrille Fijnaut and Gary T. Marx, eds. (Kluwer, 1995), and Undercover Policing and Accountability from an International Perspective, Monica den Boer, ed. (European Institute of Public Administration, 1997). The essay goes beyond the books under review to identify nine separate tradeoffs among competing goals, interests, and strategies in undercover operations that different countries negotiate in dissimilar ways, but which all of them must confront. This is the main contribution of the review. Distinguishing policy, institutional, and political tradeoffs makes it possible to understand the variety of approaches to domestic and international undercover policing as compromises struck between competing values and techniques. The essay also explores the ways in which these tradeoffs have been complicated by the growing importance of transnational undercover investigations after the September 11th attacks.
Keywords: criminal law, criminal procedure, comparative, undercover policing, terrorism, covert investigations, police methods
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation