The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency: From Common Police Service to ‘MACFBI’

On 1 April 2007, as a result of the implementation of the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006, a new national policing organisation called the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) was established. This took forward a process begun in 2001 when, as part of its contribution to the ‘war against drugs’, the Scottish Executive set up the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency (SDEA) to focus across Scotland specifically on drug crime. The SCDEA is an expanded and, potentially, more powerful version of SDEA, which has led to its being popularly described as ‘the Scottish FBI’. The purpose of this article is to examine the evolution and development of the SCDEA and to discuss some of the key issues arising from the efforts to create a ‘MacFBI’ in Scottish policing.