ABSTRACT
The fight against organized crime and money laundering constitutes a special form of repressive policy against drug trafficking that has been the subject of impassioned debates for decades. Numerous excellent police films have popularized the idea that it is not in the interest of organized crime to bring on a visible explosion of criminality that could provoke a wave of police repression. Thus, the image of organized crime networks assuming the role of policemen within the criminal world has often informed public debates on organized crime. The movies have also popularized the idea that laundering is the Achilles’ heel of drug trafficking. Therefore, to concentrate repression on this link of drug trafficking would seem to be an effective means of dissuading traffickers. Since these questions return us directly to the notion of public policy efficiency, economists have actively besieged them. A quick review of their theories gives a contrasting impression. No doubt economic theory has amply advanced discussion, in enriching terms, of effectiveness in the fight against laundering. It is in this area that the results are most pronounced: while it seems clear that the resulting policies have encountered several obstacles, we can say that, without it being a real consolation, the theories put forward really have made some contributions to our thinking on the issue. In matters of organized crime, we remain more sceptical about the range of the analysis undertaken. Using hypotheses we consider to be unrealistic, various authors have illustrated that the presence of organized crime is not necessarily more harmful to collective well-being than its absence. But this is on the condition, however, that we consider that organized crime’s only effect on society occurs via the quantity of criminal goods and services offered to the public. By not taking into account the fact that organized crime engenders important externalities that erode the very base of our societies, economic analysis follows a short cut that is too striking. The challenge presented to economic analysis by organized crime reminds us of the squaring of the circle. Either we exclude the intrinsically harmful character of organized crime from the hypotheses and we miss its
particularity, or we include it, which means taking as a hypothesis that which we are trying to illustrate.
