As YouGov’s latest polling on extradition tells us, most people in the UK agree that extradition is necessary to suppress transnational crime and terrorism.
Over half of respondents (53%) are of the opinion that extradition has become more important in bringing terrorists to justice since 9/11. Many also think, however, that the current US-UK treaty should be scrapped, as it’s too one-sided.
- 69% believe we should allow the US government to transfer suspects from Britain for alleged offences committed against US law on British soil (eg: cyber crime), so long as they are also crimes in the UK.
- 23% believe we should only extradite for crimes related to terrorism and only 13% believe we should never extradite.
- 61% also assert that the imbalanced 2003 Extradition Treaty should be revised.
Perhaps this is unsurprising: the US only needs to have ‘reasonable suspicion’ to extradite from the UK, whereas the UK must show harder evidence of ‘probable cause’ to extradite from the US. In practice, twice as many people have been extradited from the UK to the US than vice versa.
Meanwhile, if British are uncomfortable with current extradition agreements between Washington and London, this can also be explained by a lack of trust in the Requesting states’ judicial system.
- Only 22% of respondents deemed US justice to be “a fair and ethical system for trying suspects from the UK”, whilst 45% said it was not.
- In the wider geopolitical purview, only 18% believe the treaty should be upheld because it helps to preserve US-UK relations, whilst half of respondents doubt that any two governments can share the same “principles of justice”.
A panel led by Sir Scott Baker is currently reviewing the UK’s extradition arrangements and will report back to the Government by the summer of 2011.
