The Securitization of Transnational Crime

This chapter asks: what is driving criminal justice cooperation between Australia and Indonesia? By tracing various ‘wars on crime’ waged by both countries since the 1970s, it reveals how the politicization—and ultimately ‘securitization’—of transnational crime has provided much of the impetus for cooperation between them. This helps correct the standard view that such cooperation is simply a response to a growth in transnational criminal activity. The chapter concludes that the greater the politicization of a transnational problem, the greater the political will to pursue international cooperation in response. It does not follow, however, that the politicization of transnational crime within each country will necessarily result in cooperation between them. In fact, the very act of politicization can (somewhat paradoxically) make cooperation harder to achieve.