Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling: Lessons from the Inside

Assessing Risk

Even when he knew DEA after him, he figured “Hey, I never touch the stuff.What can they do to me?” (29) Nine were caught during what they claimed was their first smuggling offense. However, among the twenty-two who admitted to having been involved in smuggling drugs for a number of years, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, only one had been arrested and convicted of smuggling before the current offense. Two others had been arrested before, but the charges had been dropped due to insufficient evidence or illegal search.Their prior success and their lack of knowledge about U.S. enforcement tactics fostered their sense of immunity and their perception of risk. Assessing Risk Drug smugglers operate by balancing risk against reward. We spent considerable time querying subjects about these topics.We attempted to have them discuss their perceptions of risk and reward for their first, a typical, and their most recent drug smuggling trips. It quickly became evident that sophisticated balancing of risks and rewards was well beyond the scope of most of our subjects. Risk was a constant, but its calculation was hardly representative of the “criminal calculus” suggested by rational choice or deterrence theorists. Instead, risk was present in any smuggling event, though its quantity was unknown, and in the end it had to be neutralized in some way in order for the smuggling event to take place.This neutralization typically occurred in ways that we discussed above (experience, expertise, or technology, for example), but it was critical to the decision to become involved in a smuggling event. We also learned that risk tolerance was dynamic, typically based on age and life stage concerns, including family, financial status, and status in the community. A key element in the neutralization of risk was the magnitude of rewards. The lure of state lotteries and television programs such as Deal or No Deal and the attractiveness of get-rich-quick schemes on the Internet are well documented.The same processes Balancing Risk and Reward b 133 were at work for the drug smugglers we interviewed, albeit at a considerably higher level. In the end, doubts were quelled with reference to the volume of reward awaiting them on successful completion of a drug smuggling event. We found few individuals who remained involved in drug smuggling owing to their commitment to thrill-seeking lifestyles. However, nearly all our subjects could recount prior smuggling enterprises that included considerable thrills—thrills they missed while in prison. While pursuing a rush or a high was hardly the primary motivation for involvement, such pursuit was nonetheless a welcome attribute of drug smuggling and was an important part of the drug smuggling subculture. For those who remained in drug smuggling over a prolonged period of time (roughly ten years) and were assigned more responsibility for the loads, the calculus of a conservative businessman came to dominate. One way we attempted to measure deterrence was to ask closed-ended questions that forced subjects to consider the potential effects of different levels of arrest, conviction, and incarceration .This proved more difficult than we anticipated. By and large, the subjects did not think of risks in terms of probabilities in the way that government agencies and social scientists do. Many could not conceptualize risk in the probability terms we asked them to use. For most, getting caught was simply one of two things that could happen when they smuggled drugs. We began by asking subjects to think about whether they would continue to smuggle drugs into the United States if their chance of arrest was one out of one hundred, ten out of one hundred , or fifty out of one hundred. Fourteen subjects could not provide a direct answer to this question, illustrating their difficulties in addressing probability-based questions. Of those who did answer the question, none reported being deterred by a one in one hundred chance; 6 percent said that if the risk of arrest was ten in one hundred they would not offend; and 63 percent said that they would still offend if the chance of being arrested was fifty in one hundred. Clearly, risk of arrest had to be high in order to yield a deterrent effect. Because the gain was so high and 134 b Chapter 6 experience told them that it was relatively easy to be successful, levels of arrest did not seem to be especially potent threats to deterring...