As organized crime began to expand globally, several countries sought to develop a more strategic response in order to understand the challenge. This process was understandably driven from the law enforcement perspective but has involved a greater number of agencies over time. National-level threat assessments have generally sought to trace the linkages to international criminal networks, albeit through the lens of the impact on the reporting state. In other words, while the threat is transnational, the focus is on the country concerned.
This approach was pioneered in the United Kingdom, where an organized crime threat assessment has been conducted every year for the past decade. The resulting “United Kingdom Threat Assessment for Organised Crime” (UKTA) is a public document (although there is also an internal government version) geared at enabling the public to draw on its conclusions to protect themselves and their property. The UKTA also includes a methodology for estimating harm from organized crime in the physical, social, environmental, economic, and structural spheres, at the individual, community, and national level. This framework could be usefully extrapolated to other contexts, including, with some adjustments, post-conflict environments.
The UKTA is regarded as being part of the overall intelligence model of the United Kingdom and its conclusions are presented at the highest levels of government, bringing together a range of other departments and agencies. The result has been several strategic plans to combat organized crime. The most comprehensive attempt was published in 2011 and took a long-term approach to fighting organized crime, one that included achieving better coordination among government actors.
The UK threat assessment can claim some credit for the spread of the idea more widely in Europe. Threat assessments (and various strategies) have been completed in Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Several Italian state institutions produce annual reports on organized crime, although there appears to be no single national-level assessment. Further afield, Australia and Canada have adopted a similar process to that of the United Kingdom.
In the United States, organized crime threat assessments have followed a different trajectory. In 2007 the Department of Justice published an “International Organized Crime Threat Assessment” that focused on the development of a new strategy for tracking organized crime, including by examining global trends as they impacted on the United States. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of organized crime was conducted in 2009, following the same methodology used for preparing such estimates on other national security issues. The results remain classified.
The use of organized crime threat assessments is more limited in transitional and developing countries. The author was involved in the development of a methodology for conducting such a survey in South Africa. The results were not published, and the process has been repeated on several occasions since. Its findings also fed into an overall crime-fighting strategy, although more work remains to be done on measuring whether government interventions have had a real impact on crime as a result. There has been a notable reluctance in several other transitional and developing countries to embark on organized crime threat assessments. In discussions with officials, the reasons for not doing so are broadly said to be the following:
- The lack of analytical capacity.
- The dearth of available information (although ironically this is arguably a reason for conducting an assessment); and
- The reality that politicians (some of whom may be involved in organized crime) would not welcome such a document.
Organized crime threat assessments have, however, been published to promote discussion about the extent of and appropriate response to organized crime. For example, the International Peace Institute has published a threat assessment of organized crime in Kenya and the Center for the Study of Democracy, based in Sofia, has published a threat assessment for Bulgaria.
There is a strong argument to be made that such assessments would greatly benefit technical assistance processes by determining the priority areas for external assistance. Taken in a constructive sense, they can be considered as a gap analysis or a needs assessment. In Bulgaria, the Center for the Study of Democracy has engaged in an active campaign to argue for the production of such an assessment to assist policymaking in this regard. Nevertheless, there is some way to go before threat assessments form an institutionalized part of technical assistance. Conducting assessments in fragile and post-conflict states would be an important step in this direction, given the urgent requirements for assistance in such contexts. Because of the transnational nature of modern organized crime, national threat assessments have their limitations. There is therefore a growing tendency to take a wider perspective, either regional or global, focusing on groups, markets, and trends.
(Adapted from Shaw M 2011: An Overview of Organized Crime Threat Assessments)