Assessing the Effectiveness of Organized Crime Control Strategies ...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Organized Crime Control Strategies:
A Review of the Literature
The problem may be even more acute with regard to evaluations of OC control strategies. On the
strategy of prosecuting and incarcerating the heads of criminal organizations, for example, the
US President’s Commission on Organized Crime (1986:205) notes that no rigorous assessments
or evaluations of the “headhunting” strategy are available for inspection.
On the impact of the regulation of large-scale, illegal gambling by law enforcement agencies,
Reuter (1984:45) writes, “Unfortunately, it is not possible to test these hypotheses…Analysis of
differences between cities in which strike forces were present and those in which they were not
has never been carried out.”
On anti-money laundering measures, Levi (2002: 188) states, “Given the political and social
importance of this area, the absence of evaluation research on it and organized crime in general
is remarkable.” Later in the same article, Levi adds that, “Demonstrable impact on crime and
even on crime detection remains harder to identify, however. Methodological problems in
linking causes to effects mean that there are few defensible positive findings about the direct,
short-term impact of money-laundering reporting on prosecutions and on confiscation” (p.190).
Also on money laundering, Walther (1994:9) suggests that research in this area is still at a
nascent stage:
Forfeiture and money laundering laws undoubtedly provide for harsh sanctions in the
individual case, but do they deter It appears that a lot of empirical and theoretical
research work is awaiting criminologists and jurists in this area. The question of
deterrence undoubtedly raises a set of rather complex issues. At the outset, however,
it would be interesting to know about the ratio between the amount of profits that are
in criminal enterprises, and the proportions that so far have been successfully taken
out of it. Similarly, we may wish to look at data about the ratio between the number
of investigative measures, the number of arrests that have been effectuated under the
new and broadly defined criminal statutes [in the United States], and the number of
subsequent prosecutions and convictions.
Fyfe and McKay (2000:280) assert that witness protection programmes, too, have been the
subject of little evaluative research: “Despite nearly thirty years of formal witness protection
programmes operating in the US, research in this area is in its infancy.”
Lyman and Potter (1997:434), in a leading textbook on OC, add their voice to the lack of routine
data collection in this area, asserting that “The [US] government keeps no comprehensive
statistics on how many organized criminals have been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.”
The lack of routine data collection and rigorous evaluations in this area necessitate some
compromises with regard to the rigor one could reasonably expect from works to be included in
the present analysis. Some subjectivity was unavoidable in this exercise. Before discussing the
criteria for inclusion, let us turn to the parameters of the search strategy.
4 | Research and Statistics Division / Department of Justice Canada