There are several promising kernels in this draft resolution, but as others have noted, good ideas are insufficient to guarantee good resolutions. My knowledge of existing UN Resolutions in this field as sketchy at best, but the key ingredients for me would have been:
(a) Defining serious crimes.
- In RL, this sometimes consists of exchanges of records of criminal convictions. This is flawed because acts in one country are not necessarily the same in another, or even over time in a single country. For instance, simple possession of small amounts of marijuana are weighted equally with murder. Also, it effectively eliminates the possibility of executive clemency, pardon, remission or similar devices. This happens a lot at the Canada-U.S. border.
- Sometimes it is a "meat chart", listing all crimes considered reportable. This is hard to keep up to date, and also means that many "criminal" offences will remain prosecutable long after they have been enforced (e.g., criminal adultery).
- Sometimes it is a statement of all crimes eligible for particular punishments (e.g., those punishable by 2 years or less are ignored, those punishable by 10 years or more count). Again, this is highly variable across time and across geography.
Personally, I would think that creating a meat chart once at great expense and putting the onus on each nation to classify new crimes in relation to that meat chart is the best way to go.
(b) Defining extraditable crimes.
- Currently, most extradition is done by bilateral agreement (and occasionally multilaterally, for example by abduction of children by their guardians) and results in a frustrating (to police, public, governments and victims alike) patchwork of extraditable and non-extraditable countries.
- With a meat chart in place, this would be easier to do. The two lists could even be identical.
© Defining world jurisdiction crimes.
One basic principle of law is extraterritoriality: An act must be declared illegal in the jurisdiction in which it occurs. So, for instance, if I commit apostasy in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has jurisdiction over me and can execute me (atheism, apostasy from Islam and several other acts of conscience are RL capital offences there). If I commit apostasy in the United States, the American government has jurisdiction over me and the Saudi government cannot ask the American government to execute me on its behalf.
In RL, certain crimes are regarded as committed in the jurisdiction not of any particular country but in the jurisdiction of the world as a whole. Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and, increasingly, child exploitation fall into this category.
In NS, perhaps we could broaden this to include some of the more obvious major crimes on the meat chart (e.g., murder). We all have different opinions on the lengths to which one may go in self-defence, assisted suicide, on active euthanasia and passive means of killing people (e.g., withholding medical treatment or nourishment from braindead patients); however, a broad category of ?murder? could be constructed by consensus while individual nations were free to label additional crimes in their jurisdiction as ?murder,? various grades of homicide or similar terms. Cf.
Sober Thought Criminal Code which has established only an astonishingly small number of crimes but whose scope is very broad.
The resolution itself has already tacitly accepted such an approach in ?DEFINE crime as any act against the law in any individual UN member nation. Or something strictly against any UN proposal.?
(d) Data collection on crime rates in at least one and preferably of all three types of crime. Even in RL federal jurisdictions with the smaller level having responsibility for criminal law this can be a daunting task, e.g., the United States Uniform Crime Reports compiled by the FBI took decades to get going properly. It is fraught with underreporting of so-called victimless or vice crimes (e.g., prostitution, gambling, loansharking, drug dealing); so-called shame crimes (e.g., sexual assault, child abuse); and overreporting of a few economic incentive crimes (e.g., by padding insurance claims).
A little note on "statutory rape": this is taken to imply a rape did not occur, especially if a minor almost of age has sex with an adult who is just of age. The term is true but misleading, and it merely means that this particular crime of rape is contrary to statute or legislation. You never hear of "statutory murder" in cases of barroom brawl killings!
Nevertheless, such an endeavor -- especially if limited to a small number of important crimes -- is worthwhile and vital. Data helps not only the nations individually, but also the nations collectively. As the initial proposal suggests, the UN could use this data to assign its scarce resources to help those nations most in need.
The resolution itself mentions ?the UNSI (United Nations Security Inspectors)?.will determine whether crime rates in all UN member nations are nonexistent, low, moderate, high or alarmingly high and will only help any nation who requests help and has a moderate to large crime rate.? By going for (a)1 (make all crimes in all countries and all UN-defined crimes equally important), the UNSI is effectively hamstrung. How can it bring apostates to justice in theocracies while at the same time bringing cult leaders to justice in democracies, when both groups are committing the same acts but not crimes?
(e) More interagency and international police cooperation. International Criminal Police Organisation is not in RL a UN agency, being "merely" an association of international criminal police forces which has no legal authority in either France where it is based nor anywhere else in the world. However, by facilitating international police cooperation, INTERPOL has had an enormous impact on curtailing international crime because criminals know that no matter where they flee, that country is almost certain to be connected to the INTERPOL.
Combine this with a minimum number of automatically extraditable offences in (b) and you've got a very powerful UN agency which will have a significant effect on keeping crime down in the world generally and each nation in particular. And still done as a collaborative effort by pooling sovereignty, rather than a fiat-directed effort by seizing sovereignty.
The NS INTERPOL, or ?UN Security Inspectors? as described by the resolution, could help by:
?1. Providing a teacher to help improve the skills of the police force
2. Suggesting many hints or tips as to how to prevent crime (these hints would be made by the UNSI)
3. Help to create an advertising campaign against crime
4. Possibly suggesting punishments that would deter criminals from breaking the law?
These are all legitimate goals of a consultative rather than coercive UN organisation.
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Found in the resolution but not IMHO especially helpful are:
(a) "crime causes a sense of fear in many nations and works against both dictatorships and democracies alike."
Not true; dictatorships thrive on fomenting fear. See or read
V for Vendetta and
1984 for some obvious literary examples. Even in democracies, making certain acts illegal can cause fear (e.g., Canada recently cracked down on financial support to terrorist organisations operating outside the country, and ethnic or diaspora communities were worried this was part of a broader anti-immigrant campaign). Thus, I think it is best to avoid mention of governing styles as irrelevant for the purposes at hand and possibly inflammatory for potential signatories.
(b) "many governments are the cause of some of the crime, intentionally or not."
See above. Technically, governments are the sole cause of crime because they make the laws which criminalise acts. I think a conscientious government that tries to do right by its people and hence has a longer list of crimes should not be compared unfavourably to an uncaring government that doesn't even seriously try to do the right thing.
© "INCREASE funding to police forces and education"
Not necessarily, as the resolution itself notes that many countries have crime under control (the carrot and the stick, often appearing in the NS Spotlight description: "Crime is relatively low, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare.")
The activities of the UNSI/NSINTERPOL in (e) above are much better described.
