Assessing the Effectiveness of Organized Crime Control Strategies ...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Organized Crime Control Strategies:
A Review of the Literature
Stewart (1980:124) refers to the investigative grand jury as:
the single most useful tool by which to attack the traditional forms of organized
crime…If the witness testifies truthfully, that witness will be ostracized from the
criminal community and thereby neutralized as an organized crime
operative…Whenever any appreciable number of lower-level offenders are
summoned before an investigative grand jury, the higher-ups in the organized crime
structure can never be sure what, if anything, is being said. This alone is sufficient to
generate tensions within the organized crime structure.
On the negative side, some prosecutors have used the grand jury to harass those viewed as
political undesirables. This happened, for example, to antiwar activists in the 1970s (Kenney
and Finckenauer, 1995).
The merits of investigative grand juries is a matter of conjecture as the evidence thus far
advanced is anecdotal. Albanese (1996:196) asserts that: “Unfortunately, there has been no
objective evaluation of the benefits (in terms of multi-jurisdictional organized crime
prosecutions) versus the costs (in terms of harassment, unwarranted privacy invasions, and Fifth
Amendment issues) of investigative grand juries.”
4.11 Citizens’ Commissions, Police Commissions, and Community-Based
Initiatives
Citizens’ commissions have been established periodically in the US to deal with crime-related
issues. Among the most productive have been the Chicago and Pennsylvania crime
commissions. These investigative commissions have been helpful in the investigation of OC.
Prosecutors report that information and intelligence received from crime commissions have been
useful in identifying areas for further investigation and in developing cases for prosecution
(Albanese, 1996:182).
Rogovin and Martens (1994: 389-90) indicate that crime commissions can be:
1. Publicly funded, where investigators have police status but no arrest powers and usually
no prosecutorial authority (e.g., Pennsylvania Crime Commission);
2. Privately funded with no policing authority (e.g., Chicago Crime Commission);
3. Government-sponsored, temporary, and designed to investigate a specific incident or
phenomenon (e.g., President’s Commission on Organized Crime, Quebec Police
Commission, Knapp Commission on police corruption).
Albanese (1996) notes that aside from their contribution in investigating OC, these commissions
focus the public’s attention on the issue through their hearings, reports, and publicity. It has also
been found that witnesses are more likely to disclose their knowledge to these commissions
because their main task is to collect information, rather than build specific cases. In addition,
38 | Research and Statistics Division / Department of Justice Canada