Working to Advance CNA Awareness & Compliance


State Department Activities to Advance Consular Notification and Access Awareness and Compliance

Training and Outreach

U.S. State Department experts travel extensively throughout the United States to give training classes and seminars about consular notification and access to federal, state, and local law enforcement, corrections and criminal justice officials.  Since January 1998, the Department of State has held approximately 450 training classes, briefings, presentations, meetings and other events about this important issue in 40 U.S. states and territories - all free of charge, of course.  If your agency or organization is interested in hosting such a training event, please call us at 202-647-4415 or email us at consnot@state.gov .  (In your email, please indicate when, where, and audience size.)

View a list of all the places we have been.

Training Materials

We have distributed over 1,000,000 pieces of consular notification and access instructional material to U.S. law enforcement, corrections and criminal justice agencies since 1998, including manuals, pocket reference cards, training videos, and CD-ROMs containing a variety of resource materials – again, all free of charge to law enforcement and government agencies.  To order materials for your agency please fill out our online order form.   Model “SOP”s and consular notification and access protocols are also available upon request.

Publications

The Department has published several articles on consular notification and access, including feature-length pieces in "Corrections Today" and “American Jails Magazine,” the membership magazines of the American Correctional Association and the American Jail Association, respectively.  In 2003, the International Association of Chiefs of Police published a State Department-written training monograph on this subject for law enforcement officers – no. 562 in their “Training Key” series.  An article on consular notification and access was published in the Spring 2005 issue of “Perspectives” – the magazine of the American Probation and Parole Association.   The "Corrections Today" and "Perspectives" articles, as well as the "Training Key," are available on our CD-ROM.

The Department is available to work with editors and authors interested in publishing or writing feature pieces about consular notification and access for criminal justice association magazines and other official publications. The Department recently acted as a consultant for an article written by a legal instructor at the FBI Academy for the January 2007 Law Enforcement Bulletin. Please email us at consnot@state.gov with article ideas and any further questions you may have.

 
Distance Learning
 
The State Department teamed up with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) to produce an online training course on consular notification and access.  This course is a great way for law enforcement, corrections, and other criminal justice personnel to get up-to-date, interactive training on this topic, no matter where they are located.  The course takes about one hour to complete, including two progress checks and a self-quiz.  The FLETC Virtual Campus  provides the course – along with over 2,000 other self-paced courses, a digital library, and more – to individuals and organizations for a nominal, per-user subscription fee.  FLETC certifies successful completion of the course, which may satisfy some jurisdictions' continuing education requirements.
 
The Pegasus Program

The Department serves as a subject matter expert for the developing Pegasus Program - a non-profit, Internet-based, nationwide secure information-sharing system for city, county, and other local law enforcement agencies.  Pegasus contains a module designed to facilitate consular notification.

CALEA Standard

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies , Inc., recently published a consular notification and access standard in their 5th Edition of the "Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies." The CNA standard will require all agencies to draft a written directive governing procedures for ensuring compliance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the other consular notification agreements. Law enforcement agencies may use the State Department's CNA model SOP as a template for drafting the required directive. CALEA derives its general authority from four major law enforcement membership associations: International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, National Sheriffs' Association, and Police Executive Research Forum. Their members represent approximately 80 percent of the law enforcement profession in the United States. The Commission derives its accreditation authority from those agencies that voluntarily participate in the accreditation program. For more information about CALEA accreditation, please visit the CALEA website.