Is Cocaine Trafficking More or Less Harmful than other Organized Crime
Activities?*
In recent years, the attention of the policy community has come to rest on the harms of
criminal activities—be they “organized” or otherwise—as a basis for prioritizing and
targeting resources for crime control. In this presentation, we use a newly-developed
framework (see Greenfield) to assess the harms of three activities considered typical of
organized crime in Belgium—human trafficking, tobacco smuggling, and VAT-fraud—
and then, to the extent possible, compare these harms with those associated with cocaine
trafficking in the same country. Although unable to develop a singular estimate of harm
for each activity, we can compare the severity and probability of different types of harms
to particular classes of bearers, be they individuals, private-sector entities, public-sector
entities, or the environment. We base the analysis on an extensive primary data
collection, including an analysis of 86 criminal proceedings, all data files recorded for the
four activities in the organized crime database of Belgian Federal Police for the period
2006-2008, and organized crime reports and statistics. We also rely on information culled
from interviews with 41 law enforcement and other experts and with 18 offenders.
The comparative exercise indicates the value of the framework as an evidencebased, systematic tool for focusing policy-making attention and national resources on
actual instead of perceived or press-worthy harms. The harm framework is not intended,
though, to provide policymakers with a recipe for optimal resource allocations.
Policymakers must weigh at least some of the findings of the harm assessment for
themselves, on behalf of their constituents. Shall, for example, the harms affecting
offenders be factored into the allocation of resources and, if yes, should they be weighed
differently than those affecting law-abiding citizens? Ultimately, given the
incommensurability of harms across different classes of bearers, no purely scientific
procedure can establish, for example, whether the corruption of government employees
produces harms of greater priority than violence against individuals. Nevertheless, we
regard it as a further merit of the framework that it clarifies which elements of
prioritization can be carried out on the basis of scientific rules and methods and which
cannot.
Prof. Dr. Letizia PAOLI
LINC, Leuven Institute of Criminology
K.U. Leuven Faculty of Law
Hooverplein 10-11
B-3000 Leuven - Belgium
Phone: + 32 (0)16 325274
Fax: + 32 (0)16 325463
E-mail: Letizia.Paoli@law.kuleuven.be
*Based on work-in-progress with Victoria A. Greenfield of the U.S. Naval Academy and
with Andries Zoutendijk of K.U. Leuven, Belgium, undertaken as part of a larger project
for the Belgian Science Policy Office.