Assessing the Effectiveness of Organized Crime Control Strategies ...

police thought they were investigating one organization. Counting organized crime is
like counting sandbanks in the North Sea…there is a constant shift in composition,
shape, and size.
Apart from the difficulty involved in documenting their number, van Duyne notes that the
determination of the threat to society posed by these enterprises is quite subjective and a
questionable measure, as most of the entrepreneurs running them have no intention of
challenging the existing social order. In any event, any measure of this type would need to
consider the quality of the threat and extent of harm posed by each criminal organization, rather
than a simple tally of these enterprises. Furthermore, quantifying the number and activities of
criminal enterprises would still fail to take into consideration those activities of OC groups that
are undertaken through legitimate businesses. Moreover, as Maltz (1990:25) notes, it is difficult
to ascertain the extent to which activities usually associated with OC, such as gambling or
prostitution, are run by criminal syndicates as opposed to individual entrepreneurs.
A related measure of program success is its impact on OC groups. In other words, has a given
control effort disrupted a criminal organization Measuring disruption entails detailed and
accurate knowledge of an organization. Even where disruption can be documented, one must
attend to the possibility that other groups have emerged to fill the void left by the weakened
organization.
Efficiency of Criminal Justice Units
Blakey, Goldstock, and Rogovin (1978:55) take the view that fairly modest goals should be set
in evaluating efforts to control OC. They acknowledge that attributing changes in crime patterns
to modifications in the functioning of the justice system may be overly ambitious, as too many
other factors may play an important role in those changes. They therefore propose that the
efficiency of criminal justice agencies/units, rather than their impact, should be the focus of
evaluative efforts. One can determine, for example, the relation between the inputs (resources)
and outputs (arrests, convictions) of the unit. Modest goals can be established for parts of the
system and efforts can be undertaken to ascertain how well the unit is working to achieve these
goals. Examples include the ability of a unit to gather evidence, the amount of information
developed on OC, the number of requests for assistance by local prosecutors, and the number of
cases handled by specialized units that other law enforcement agencies could not handle (Maltz,
1990:7-8). Blakey and his colleagues also recommend that OC control units should undergo
continuous internal review, as well as periodic external evaluation.
The need for external evaluations based on clear agency objectives has also been emphasized by
Beare (1996:185). She cites the conclusion of reports by the United States’ General Accounting
Office and various task forces that most evaluations of OC control efforts have been selfevaluations
by agencies. These evaluations have tended to focus on administrative data rather
than on the impact of agency activities. Furthermore, she adds that even where agencies set clear
objectives, they seldom create oversight committees that can steer agency activities toward the
objectives.
Research and Statistics Division / Department of Justice Canada | 15