Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling: Lessons from the Inside

Summary

costs, high mobility within the cocaine industry, and the ability to respond quickly to changes in enforcement policy combine to frustrate the best efforts at interdiction. Summary These studies taken together provide some insights into drug smuggling organizations, methods used to transport drugs, and deterrence capabilities for drug interdiction efforts.This brief review has established several common themes, including smuggler organizational structure, smuggler intelligence, and deterrence. First, a number of the studies (Reuter and Haaga, Rockwell, IDA, Griffith, and Zaitch) noted the lack of organizational structure that characterizes drug smuggling organizations.The observation that even high-level international drug smuggling lacks many of the characteristics of formal organizational structure is common to much research on the organization of criminal enterprises (e.g., Best and Luckenbill, 1994; Decker, Bynum, and Weisel, 1998). Ianni’s (1974) description of organized crime indicated that the organizational ties between individuals in group enterprises are of short duration, involve transactions of an immediate or timebound nature, lack permanence, and fail to create lasting commitments to a larger organization.This description is similar to what the research has found regarding drug organizations. Key to understanding the nature of social organizations is following the flow of information (Burt, 1992; Arquilla and Ronfeldt , 1997). In networks of individuals who are loosely connected to each other, interact on a one-time basis, and know of each other through third parties, there is little permanence to the flow of information and less ability to subject information to quality control.We characterize such groups of individuals as informally based, temporally bounded, and loosely coupled. Williams argued that much of the inability of interdiction efforts to achieve better results stems from “the failure to understand fully the structure of these networks and their capacity to counter or circumvent law enforcement and military interdiction” (1998: 154). Motivation for the Study b 15 The view that dominates current conceptualization of drug smuggling organizations describes vertically integrated structures that resemble the dominant corporate structures following World War II. However, as Burt (1992) and Williams (1998) observed, there are many cells within formal organizations—from drug smuggling, to money laundering, to terrorist groups—that have access to information and technology that allow them to operate independently, often in ways that the organizational heads do not know about, do not understand, and certainly cannot control. Williams argued that the key to understanding such groups is to view them as networks, as a series of loosely connected nodes (individuals , organizations, firms, and information-sharing tools) that are linked across and within organizations.These links are often of short duration and primarily task-specific. From this view, it is impossible to trace a straight vertical line from the bottom of an organization that houses the largest number of workers to decision makers at the top. Indeed, groups that are organized in this fashion may be incapable of developing a more formal structure, as they lack the necessary characteristics to do so. Networks can be linked within and across organizations and between and within functions, and they can even include competitors . Many networks are self-contained units with no physical contact involving individuals in other parts of the network. The insularity of these nodes is a useful conceptual framework for understanding the drug smuggling process. Networks can cut across a variety of political, linguistic, legal, and geographic barriers in ways that formal organizations cannot. Because of their insular and self-contained nature, networks can be more difficult to penetrate and deter than are large organizations. In a large organization , it may be possible to “flip” one individual and move up—or down—the chain of command. In a series of interconnected networks , it may be impossible to move from one network to another because individuals may not know each other, may not have information about the identity of individuals in other networks, or may just represent the end of a network. Such networks are dynamic and capable of rapid change because they are based not on 16 b Chapter 1 an existing structure but on the transfer of information (Abt Associates , 1999). For example, when one source for the transportation of drugs is eliminated, it is an easy matter to contract with another source outside the network of the first transporter. Williams (1998) noted the comparative advantage of such networks over more formal organizations. In a sense, such networks are not trapped by their structure and history and can...