Victims and Offenders, 4:412–419, 2009

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group,

LLC ISSN: 1556-4886 print/1556-4991
online DOI: 10.1080/15564880903227594

Controlling Organized Crime:

Looking for Evidence-Based
Approaches
Jay S. Albanese
Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University,
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Abstract: Serious policy-relevant research on organized crime has been thwarted by
ideological views, the failure to generate systematic data, and a single-minded law
enforcement approach to its control. Correspondingly, there has been a failure to
gen- erate needed data for analysis and evaluation of anti–organized crime
initiatives. This article summarizes the current situation, evaluates emerging work
which is challenging past assumptions, and describes a data and research approach
to develop more useful policy-relevant research on organized crime, based on
evidence rather than ideology.

Keywords: organized crime, criminal justice policy, ideology, evaluation, crime

prevention

ORGANIZED CRIME PREVENTION AND CONTROL

Walter Miller’s classic article “Ideology and Criminal Justice Policy” concluded
with the observation, “when assertions are made about what measures best
serve the purposes of securing order, justice, and the public welfare, one should
ask, ‘How do we know this?’” (1973, p. 150). In the decades since Miller’s article,
studies have found that ideology remains a strong foundation of criminal justice
policy, the gathering of empirical information to inform policy decisions is still a
low priority, and there is comparatively little effort devoted to assessing the
objective impacts of these criminal justice policy decisions (Albanese, 1982;
Clear, 2004; Cook & Lane, 2005; McGarrell & Flanagan, 1987; Naughton, 2005).
The subject of organized crime has suffered disproportionately from the
problem of an ideologically infused debate, to the exclusion of facts, as popular
images of organized crime dominate over factual descriptions. The Godfather,

Address correspondence to Jay S. Albanese, Virginia Commonwealth University,

Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, 923 West Franklin Street, P.O. Box
842028, Richmond, VA 23284. E-mail: jsalbane@vcu.edu

412
 Organized Crime 413

The Sopranos, and The Departed are just a few of a long series of extremely
popular images of organized crime, all of which are fiction, but are widely
believed by many to be factual (Albanese, 2007; Finckenauer, 2007; Smith,
1975). This has created the mafia stereotype of organized crime, a situation that
is particularly unsettling when one considers that organized crime groups have
a greater capacity for harm than individual criminals because of their size,
membership, and ongoing nature (Finckenauer, 2009). Therefore, organized
crime should be at the top of the priority list for rational policy approaches.

REVIEW OF EVIDENCE AND POLICY DISCUSSION

This brief review will organize existing evidence about organized crime into
two categories: (1) missing data about the nature of organized crime and crim-
inals and (2) nonexistent evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of orga-
nized crime control policies and prevention. I will briefly describe the state of
knowledge in each area and point to future research and policy needs.

Missing Data about the Nature of Organized Crime and Criminals

There generally has been a shocking lack of attention worldwide to docu-
menting and accurately measuring or estimating organized crime. As one
author put it, “organized crime has been defined in the relative absence of
knowledge” about its true dimensions (Castle, 2008, p. 139). Few countries
make any effort to systematically count it, measure changes from year to
year, or objectively determine the impact of laws and policies intended to
reduce its incidence. Therefore, organized crime “control” efforts generally
occur in a vacuum, so that reasonable questions such as the following cannot
be answered: Has this policy had any impact on organized crime groups?
Has it affected the incidence of organized crime activity? What is the precise
cost- benefit analysis of the approaches taken in terms of cost, impact on
citizens, markets, and organized crime? The situation is comparable to
marketing a new anticancer drug, but failing to measure in any systematic
way whether the drug actually has any impact on cancer!
Despite this unfortunate general state of affairs, there have been several
worthwhile emerging efforts to use data to inform policy. Given the
difficulties of counting organized crime accurately (whether by offense,
individual, or group), a more proactive approach examines the correlates of
businesses and markets prone to organized crime activity. Thus far,
organized crime risk assessment has focused on groups. The Criminal
Intelligence Service of Canada (CISC) has been a leader in this area,
developing the Sleipnir tool as a threat assess- ment technique. Sleipnir
ranks the relative threat posed by organized crime networks by assigning
values to 19 attributes to assess the capabilities and threat (Strang, 2005).
The attributes, rankings, definitions, and values are
414 J. S.
based on the consensus of opinion of Canadian experts in organized crime
employed in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) and related
agencies. The consensus was determined through a Delphi survey of these
individuals, rather than empirically, and a revised Sleipnir with fewer
attributes is under development (Castle, 2008; Tusikov, 2009). Efforts in the
European Union and the United Kingdom to evaluate the threat of organized
crime appear to be derived from the work in Canada (Organized Crime
Threat Assessment, 2009; Serious Organized Crime Agency, 2008).
A problem with ranking the risk of known organized crime groups or net-
works is that it does not allow for knowledge about new groups, emerging
groups, or new products and services to exploit. Therefore it is imperative that
criminal opportunities be used to compare existing and potential organized
crime activities and markets. There is some evidence to suggest that a good
risk assessment device focusing on organized crime activities and potential
markets might lead us directly to the networks that law enforcement is inter-
ested in disrupting (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 (following the large, curved arrows), looks to assessment of high
risk in specific products and markets, knowing that these markets will attract
the offenders that law enforcement seeks. The difference in the two approaches
is that the traditional approach focuses on high risk offenders and groups
(with impacts on illicit markets and activities a secondary concern), whereas
the alternative approach focuses on identification of high risk products and
markets (knowing that targeting these will also yield the offenders involved).
Put another way, if you correctly identify the high risk products and markets,
you will know where to look for the offenders. This is an important distinction
because even markets with no prior history of organized crime can be identified
through this process, providing information beyond what might be obtained

A different focus & approach

Risk of organized crime involvement in specific products

Historical Law enforcement and markets
focus: Gather info to locate offenders Locate/interdict high risk individuals and groups
Traditional approach
impact

High risk markets will attract offenders

Figure 1: Risk assessment focus on activities versus individuals.

Source: (Albanese, 2008).
 Organized Crime 415

from targeting assessments to those individuals and groups with known ties
to organized crime (Albanese, 2008; Tusikov, 2008). Therefore, data about the
nature of organized crime and criminals can be developed, but significant
national efforts will be required to gather periodic data; efforts in Canada and
elsewhere are a launching point for a broader effort to understand the true
nature, threat, and opportunities for organized crime across different prod-
ucts, services, and markets.

Nonexistent Evaluation of the Effectiveness and

Impact of Organized Crime Control Policies or
Prevention
The organized crime control policies which have been “standard” tools
against organized crime have not been evaluated; their continued use is based
on belief, rather than on knowledge that they are indeed effective. There is a
need to move to an empirical approach at two levels: organized crime control
policy and prevention. In terms of organized crime control policy, a move is
needed from policy imitation to empirical assessment, and implementation of
strategies which show promise of past or future success.
Consider some of the major anti–organized crime policies enacted in many
countries: wiretapping and electronic surveillance, witness protection pro-
grams, continuing enterprise and racketeering laws, use of criminal infor-
mants, undercover and sting operations, citizen investigation commissions,
witness immunity, suspicious activity reports for money laundering, and spe-
cial grand juries. Policies and techniques like these have been enacted and
continued in the absence of any systematic assessment of their appropriate use;
misuse; the type of cases in which they may be most appropriate; and their
effectiveness, impact on organized crime, and cost-benefit analysis (in financial,
human, and social terms). Without objective empirical assessment of assertions
about existing crime policies, Walter Miller’s question—“How do we know
this?”—cannot be answered.
Research designs can be developed to assess organized crime control poli-
cies, but government-granted access to data and the principals involved is
required. Given existing experience, for example, it is possible to compare the
use of these investigative and prosecutorial tools in different kinds of cases
and locations, but such research has not yet been given the priority, resources,
or requisite access to data.
The fact that such assessment and evaluation has not occurred is
puzzling, given the tremendous resources invested in organized crime control
policies. For example, the United States has invested millions of dollars in
appointing trustees to monitor more than 20 corrupt labor unions over
multiyear periods. As one assessment concluded, “it is incredible that more
than 20 years of civil RICO litigation against racketeer-ridden unions has
been conducted without any evaluation whatsoever . . . successes and failures
have never been identified,
416 J. S.
much less documented or analyzed” (Jacobs, 2006, pp. 238–239). An evidence-
based review of organized crime control programs found that “despite all the
legislative efforts aimed at organized crime and money laundering during the
1990s, there have been no major research studies in any key areas that con-
form to the normal canon of evaluation” (Levi & Maguire, 2004, p. 407). An
assessment of an unpublished review of 18 separate organized crime control
efforts concluded that “evidence of effectiveness of existing organized crime
control strategies is scarce to the point of near-absence” (Castle, 2008, p. 144).
An evaluation 14 projects against organized crime in Sweden found they made
“it more difficult for groups of individuals to carry out organized crime,” but no
objective data is provided to support this conclusion (Swedish National Council
on Crime Prevention, 2009, p. 96). The result of all of this activity is that many
years of experience may have been wasted, because basic questions such as
the following cannot be answered: What should be the nature and duration of
an intervention, and under what circumstances? Which remedial strategies
work best and why?
Conceptual work has been carried out which illustrates how such assess-
ments of organized crime control policies can be carried out empirically and
objectively, using available data, community-level indicators of crime, evalua-
tion of legal instruments, and assessing the impact of policies on organized
crime groups and networks (Castle, 2008; Fazey, 2007; Leong, 2007; Levi &
Maguire, 2004; Siegel & Nelen, 2008; Van Dijk, 2007). What remains is a com-
mitment by the public sector to ensure that its investment in organized crime
control is effective, informed by data, and periodically adjusted according to
the findings of empirical assessments.
There has been a great deal of law and enforcement activity addressed to
organized crime, but much less attention to the possibilities for reduction and
prevention of its occurrence. To what extent can the opportunities for orga-
nized crime be limited more effectively? Do organized crime control policies
exert any preventive impact? To what extent can organized crime involvement
in a market or geographic area be anticipated? These are the kinds of ques-
tions to which there has been granted too little consideration (Albanese, 2008;
Buscaglia & van Dijk, 2003; Edwards & Levi, 2008; Felson, 2006; Leeper
Piquero, 2005; Sung, 2004; Vander Beken, 2004).
A lack of attention to organized crime prevention is symptomatic of the one-
sided approach to organized crime control: a heavy emphasis on the law and
enforcement, which is never assessed to determine its impact and effec-
tiveness. An evaluation of anti–organized crime programs in Sweden found an
absence of prevention-focused efforts, and that “more wiretapping and more
reconnaissance efforts have been carried out, and the efforts made have been
more persistent. On the other hand, it can hardly be described as something
new and innovative regarding methods development” (Swedish National
Council on Crime Prevention, 2009, p. 93). A prevention approach requires
 Organized Crime 417

systematic and regular collection of information to replace the status quo with
empirical documentation of implementation and impacts.

CONCLUSION
The existing ideological approach to organized crime has thwarted the accu-
mulation of knowledge, which has resulted in a great deal of experience with
very little learned from it. With the meager research that has been done so
far, some correlates of organized crime activity have been identified. In
order to move forward and identify true risk factors, it will be necessary to
show that certain factors or conditions precede organized crime activity.
This requires data collection at regular intervals over time to move our
understand- ing from simple correlates to identifying true risk factors.
Demonstration of the true causes of organized crime will require a showing of
correlation and risk— and that exposure to the risk factor resulted in the
organized crime activity (Murray, Farrington, & Eisner, 2009).
Efforts to date “almost inevitably lack the crucial dimension of a focus on
longer term outcomes and on the structures and conditions which facilitate
organized crime enterprises” (Levi & Maguire, 2004, p. 410). This failure to
systematically assess efforts against organized crime has resulted in the
view that whatever we do has “an inherently good outcome with an assumed
pro- portionate impact worthy of the associated expenditure” (Castle, 2008, p.
138). But without any kind of true evaluation, this belief is ideological and
not based on empirical facts.

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