Effectiveness: Law Enforcement -v- Organised Crime

[davidbfpo]

An intriguing passage in an article by the ex-Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police today:

In a speech two years ago, I estimated that there were about 6,000 organised criminal groups in the UK, with a total of around 38,000 individuals. Most of them operate without being disrupted by the police: indeed, in 2010, I estimated that nearly 90 per cent do. That was better than the figure for 2003, which was 94 per cent.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...sed-crime.html

Organised crime has not been my area of interest, but I cannot recall seeing such an estimate in the British public domain before.

Anyone aware of any similar local, regional or national estimates of effectiveness?

[slapout9]

David, in America organized crime dosen't mean the same thing as it does in the UK. The article you posted is talking about what we would call street gangs over hear. Try researching Gang Statistics.

here is a goody.... FBI Gangs includes success stories.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investig...orthefts/gangs

[davidbfpo]

Slap,

Thanks, I expected definitions would be different. For reasons I don't fully understand here we group gangs and organised crime together.

What I was seeking was other figures on effectiveness.

I have read through the offered 2011 FBI National Gang Assessment, which has nothing on effectiveness; indeed has a few rather negative pointers.

[davidbfpo]

From a friend who watches this area of public policy, from a different viewpoint:

Even in the UK, a country with many years experience of developing intelligence and collating crime statistics extremely vague and contradictory estimates might be provided by government: ‘Total cost of economic and social harm caused to the UK by organised crime is estimated at between £20 billion and £40 billion each year.’ (Home Office, 2012).

There is similar vagueness over the numbers of published targets: in July 2011 this was c38,000 individuals involving around 6,000 criminal groups; in May 2012 it was c30,000 individuals and 7,000 groups!

Confusing things further, in 2009 the Cabinet Office had published estimated costs for different types of organised crime totalling £68.4 billion!

It is instructive to compare these estimates with those for the costs of tax avoidance (legal) and tax evasion (illegal) in the UK: tax avoidance costs the UK £25 billion a year; tax evasion £70 billion a year; and uncollected tax amounts to £27 billion to £28 billion.

Later figures from:http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2...tax-realities/

[davidbfpo]

An intriguing commentary by a UK academic, Michael Woodiwiss, on organised crime and law enforcement. Within is this passage:

The importance of dealing with organized crime... cannot be over-emphasized. Intelligent action requires knowledge - not, as in too many cases, a mere redoubling of effort in the absence of adequate information and a definite plan. The carrying out of our recommendation for immediate, comprehensive, and scientific nation-wide inquiry into organized crime should make possible the development of an intelligent plan for its control.

It is an American report:

In 1931 the Wickersham Commission

Worth a read:http://www.historyandpolicy.org/pape...paper-138.html

[Bob's World]

When one combines bad laws that create vast illegal markets with bad policies that create significant populace groups that feel there is little opportunity within the legal avenues enjoyed by others, it creates a breeding ground for gangs and organized crime.

The instinct of government is to "enforce the rule of law" - which may mitigate the symptoms a bit, may change the actors as many are shunted off into a growing network of prisons, but often serves equally to make this illegal competition even more violent and more disruptive to society.

Instead we need to take a hard look at the laws that create these illegal markets and ask if there are smarter, more effective ways to achieve the effects those laws were intended (but failed) to attain? Look at the populace groups that these organized groups are created within and honestly assess how do these populations feel and how can governance evolve to better include them into legal society.

Harder and faster and pouring in more money and people to enforce the rule of law is simplistic. We need to find simple. But simple requires deeper understanding and a willingness to honestly assess and accept one's own contribution to the problem one seeks to solve.