Double criminality (also known as dual criminality) is a requirement in the extradition law of many countries. It states that a suspect can be extradited from one country to stand trial for breaking a second country's laws only when a similar law exists in the extraditing country.
For example, if Country A has no laws against blasphemy, double criminality could prevent a suspect being extradited from Country A to face blasphemy charges in another country.
Famous quotes containing the words double and/or criminality:
“Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another mistake. A double one in fact. There were plenty of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque one; it is the crying defect of my character.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms. No people exists whose morality is not daily infringed upon. We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)