Abstract
This article explores the possibility of measuring the impact of law enforcement on organized crime in a reliable and accountable manner, both in general terms and with a practical focus on the Canadian context. In considering measures to combat organized crime, a focus on process measurement has obscured the more substantial question of progress as regards the dependent variable itself: the bottom line of reducing the impact of organized criminal behaviour. While outcome measures are more challenging to identify than process measures, this fact alone does not minimize the need to demonstrate the connection between organized crime enforcement and its presumed outcomes to a greater degree of certainty. To date, this has not been realized to any significant degree, as revealed by a review of existing international approaches to measuring the impact of enforcement activity. The article argues that a multidisciplinary focus on community level indicators of crime, if initially less accessible than process measures of impact on organized crime groups, offers promise as a measurement of absolute and relative impact of state investment in enforcement.
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Notes
An initial version of this article was prepared for the 2007 annual meeting of the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada Executive Committee in Calgary AB. I am grateful to Patrick Neal for research assistance, and for the comments and suggestions provided by Gary Bass, Fiona Young, Darryl Plecas, Paul Brantingham, Patricia Brantingham, Bryan Kinney, Rob Fahlman, Agnes Jelking, Andreas Schloenhardt, Yvette Plante, Chisen Goto, Wayne Holland, and two anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts.
Criminal Code of Canada, hereinafter CCC.
In the province of British Columbia, for instance, the number of criminal organizations identified according to reporting year (Criminal Intelligence Service of British Columbia 2007) was 52 (2003), 84 (2004), 108 (2005), 124 (2006), and 129 (2007).
The development of SLEIPNIR was led by Steven Strang of the RCMP’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate through iterative consultations with subject matter experts, and the tool was implemented by the RCMP circa 2000. The model has been widely adopted within the Canadian criminal intelligence community. A revised version is currently under development.
Although SLEIPNIR has, for good reason, a near monopoly position in terms of the methods used by Canadian police agencies to assess their target bases, work continues in several agencies on a complementary model based on Social Network Analysis. While this approach may yield more reliable analysis of the structure and relationships amongst criminals and the manner in which they collaborate strategically, its limitations with respect to its data universe (police-identified targets) are identical to the ones detailed for the threat measurement approach in the following paragraphs.
Acknowledgement of the third of these three limitations—the data gathering challenges inherent in measuring impact via SLEIPNIR—has led to recent efforts in Canada to establish a stand-alone measure of “disruption” which takes as its more direct focus judicial, economic and other punitive or limiting effects on the capacity of criminal organizations. At present, however, the data available via this method is identical to that available to analysts applying the SLEIPNIR tool. There is considerable merit in this approach in principle, but a well governed and interdisciplinary data collection strategy distinct from standard criminal information gathering is necessary for the value of such a model to be realized.
Twelve of these agencies have either comprehensive responsibility for countering organized crime, or responsibility for a substantial portion of that mandate (e.g. cross-border trafficking or money laundering). The two FIUs, while tasked with tracking financial information in support of enforcement, have access in principle to a broad range of financial data within their own national banking systems which may be married with police information.
One possible exception to this comment would be the ad hoc reports on policing offered occasionally by the US GAO, Canadian Auditor-General, and similar bodies. However, none of these approximate an ongoing performance-based accountability framework for organized crime enforcement, being more likely to call for such a framework instead.
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Castle, A. Measuring the impact of law enforcement on organized crime. Trends Organ Crim 11, 135–156 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-008-9030-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-008-9030-4