Dispensing Irregular Justice: State Sponsored Abductions, Prisoner Surrenders, and Extralegal Renditions Along the Canada–United States Border

Abstract

In 1899, Levi Edwin Dudley, the American consul at Vancouver, complained about the ways that Canadian and American police officers enacted justice along their shared border. During one of Dudley's investigations into alleged abuses, he spoke with a Canadian officer about the ways that local agents on both sides of the border approached their jobs. The officer, speaking under conditions of anonymity, noted that “on the border here we must do things in an irregular way in order to preserve the peace.” The ability of criminals to move back and forth across the line forced American and Canadian officers to “‘stand in’ with each other, [or] we should have the country filled with desperadoes.” American officers transferred criminals over to Canadian agents without proper clearance and Canadian officers later returned the favor. This system of irregular justice utilized informal prisoner exchanges built on local understandings, professional courtesy, and mutual concern to circumvent the slow, uncertain, and expensive extradition process. For Dudley, this kind of behavior threatened the liberty of citizens in both countries. For the officers tasked with policing a region of bisecting jurisdictions, it was a necessary evil.