Mutual Legal Assistance

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Mutual Legal Assistance is the process through which “states seek and provide assistance in gathering evidence for use in criminal cases.” [1] In a day and age where crime and evidence knows no borders, mutual legal assistance has become an essential tool in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. International cooperation has become a necessity and many criminals would not be put to justice without collaborative efforts between member states. Extradition is a process that particularly benefits from mutual legal assistance since the entirety of the process is based on bilateral and multilateral treaties.
To facilitate the formation of treaties under international legal standards, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime published the Manual on Mutual Legal Assistance and Extradition. The Manual provides guidelines for member states to establish dialogue in order to collect evidence and prosecute individuals involved in transnational crime. At the core, the principle of Mutual Legal Assistance is based on effective …show more content…

[2] A popular form of investigation is police-to-police due to the existence of “well established networks of liaison officers throughout the world, as well as tried-and-true lines of communication and protocols with the many police agencies that they consistently deal with.” [3] Also, police organizations receive aid from INTERPOL for sanctioned investigations in foreign countries. The involvement of police organizations for the purpose of locating witnesses and the sharing of documentation can be achieved without a formal mutual legal assistance request. Similar requests can be carried out through agency-to-agency communication as well as consular communications depending on the sensitivity of the information

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