The fourth evaluation report on joint investigation teams (JITs) was published on 14 June by the secretariat of the Network of National Experts on JITs. This report aims to provide JIT practitioners with practical lessons learned from their latest operations.
Based on 82 evaluations carried out between November 2019 and November 2022, the report highlights the importance of engaging with victims throughout the JIT process. For example, in JIT cases involving human trafficking and migrant smuggling, the report recommends considering visits to the country where the crime took place and to the victims’ country of origin in order to better understand the local specificities of each case.
The report also outlines recent developments. Between the beginning of 2019 and the end of 2022, the EU Agency for Judicial Cooperation, Eurojust, supported a total of 498 JITs, 331 of which were newly created.
The number of JITs supported per year varied from 258 to 269. However, as a result of the pandemic, the number of new JITs created each year has fallen from 102 in 2019 to 76 in 2022.
Among the main types of crime investigated by the new JITs, organised crime (118 cases), money laundering (85 cases) and fraud (79 cases) are at the top of the list.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/7jv (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)