Most Wanted List
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A most wanted list is a list of
criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...
s and alleged criminals who are believed to be at large and are identified as a
law enforcement agency A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for law enforcement within a specific jurisdiction through the employment and deployment of law enforcement officers and their resources. The most common type of law enforcement ...
's highest priority for capture. The list can alert the public to be watchful, and generates publicity for the agency.


History

The
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
(FBI) was the first agency to create a most wanted list. The
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William ...
list was inaugurated on March 14, 1950, at the direction of FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American attorney and law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau o ...
. The idea for the list came from a question asked by a reporter for the
International News Service The International News Service (INS) was a U.S.-based news agency (newswire) founded by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst in 1909.
. The reporter asked the FBI to provide names and descriptions of the "toughest guys" that the agency wanted to capture. After observing the high level of
public interest In social science and economics, public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. While it has earlier philosophical roots and is considered to be at the core of democratic theories of government, often paired ...
generated by the resulting news story, Hoover decided to publish a formal list.


Context


Collective

In the years following the creation of the American initial lists, other law enforcement agencies around the world, representing all jurisdictional levels, have issued their own lists of most wanted fugitives. Although lists often contain lone suspects, they sometimes contain individuals who form part of a larger network. Sometimes this can constitute a closely knit network as a gang, but can also constitute a loose-connected or a person within an umbrella agglomeration whose association to one another is negligible and may even have an international scope. In such collective scenarios, there is a common assumption that making it onto a fugitive-like list necessitates rendering such an individual as a leading figure within one's field of turpitude. However ofttimes such an individual's upturn in notability may largely stem from notoriety caused by mainstream media
sensationalism In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emoti ...
or in international situations, due to a shared nationality between the suspect and the jurisdiction of the law enforcement agency. List members generally are not ranked by priority. Historically, a higher proportion of suspected persons on such lists were often listed in accordance with deeds pertaining to betrayal, such as
double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
s, or purveyors of
treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...
.


Individuals

There is no official worldwide list of most wanted fugitives.
Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization – INTERPOL (abbreviated as ICPO–INTERPOL), commonly known as Interpol ( , ; stylized in allcaps), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime cont ...
publishes a list of "
red notice An Interpol notice is an international alert circulated by Interpol to communicate information about crimes, criminals, and threats by police in a member state (or an authorised international entity) to their counterparts around the world. The in ...
s" identifying and describing fugitive persons who are wanted by a national jurisdiction and are being sought internationally for capture and
extradition In an extradition, one Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction delivers a person Suspect, accused or Conviction, convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforc ...
. This is, however, an inclusive list rather than a "most wanted" list. In 2008, ''Forbes'' magazine published an informal list of
the World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William ...
, assembled after consulting with law enforcement agencies around the world. Candidates for the ''Forbes'' list were fugitives thought to be dangerous who had "a long history of committing serious crimes", who had been
indicted An indictment ( ) is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offense is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use that concept often use that of an indi ...
or charged with a crime in a national jurisdiction or by an international tribunal, and who were involved with a type of criminal activity "with which legal institutions in diverse jurisdictions are grappling". The ''Forbes'' list has been updated and republished in subsequent years.


Examples

* '' Alcatrazlistan'', organized crime list in Sweden named after the San Francisco prison * EU Most Wanted *
FBI Most Wanted Terrorists The FBI Most Wanted Terrorists is a list created and first released on October 10, 2001, with the authority of United States president George W. Bush, following the September 11 attacks. Initially, the list contained 22 of the top suspected terr ...
*
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives is a most wanted list maintained by the United States's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William ...
* ICE Most Wanted *
List of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords On 23 March 2009, federal authorities in Mexico published a list of the country's most-wanted drug lords. According to a BBC Mundo Mexico report, the 37 people listed "have jeopardized Mexico national security." This list of drug lords is gro ...
*
List of most wanted fugitives in Italy The list of most wanted fugitives in Italy is a most wanted list published by the Italian Interior Ministry. It includes criminals who are considered extremely dangerous by the Polizia di Stato. The list was started in July 1992. There are also l ...
* NIA Most Wanted, most wanted in
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
*
Saudi list of most-wanted suspected terrorists Periodically Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Interior publishes a most wanted list. According to '' Asharq Alawsat'' Saudi Arabia has published four lists of "most wanted" suspected terrorists, and those lists contained 19, 26, 36 and 85 in ...
*
U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis In April 2003, the United States drew up a list of most-wanted Iraqis, consisting of the 55 members of the deposed Ba'athist Iraqi regime whom they most wanted to capture. The list was turned into a set of playing card A playing card is a pi ...


References

{{reflist Criminals by status Law enforcement