In 1987 Reuter and Haaga (1989) conducted the first notable study of high-level drug markets by interviewing 94 prison inmates randomly selected from five federal correctional facilities. Four of the five federal correctional facilities were classified as Level I, the lowest level of security, and the other was a Level II facility. It appears that the sampling strategy was focused on institutions rather than individuals. They note that because the sample was limited to low-security level institutions, potential bias was introduced into the sample because of the lack of access to higher-level drug dealers. Although forty-one (42%) of those who were approached agreed to be interviewed, thirty-two of the respondents were actual drug dealers (three were classified as heroin dealers, 20 were classified cocaine dealers and nine were marijuana dealers). Of the cocaine dealers, only two had purchased more than 10 kilograms, and four of the 20 were identified as importers. Among the marijuana dealers, five were importers (two had purchased more than 1 ton of marijuana).²⁵

Reuter and Haaga describe a variety of reasons for refusing to be interviewed, including a reluctance to discuss the past, ongoing legal challenges to incarceration, concerns over the confidentiality of the interview, and anger at the government's treatment in the past. Despite these concerns, Reuter and Haaga (1989: 28) conclude, "With a few exceptions, the information from the interviews was plausible, internally consistent, and consistent with the Pre-Sentencing Report information." The study examined four substantive areas of interest. The authors were particularly interested in learning about the ease, or difficulty, of penetrating drug markets and moving up the ranks. The second research question focussed on the nature of the organization behind high-level drug dealing. The third examined the need for violence in drug dealing at high levels, and the fourth examined the extent to which wholesale drug markets exist as regional, rather than national, markets.

The drug markets described by the smugglers indicate that entry and succession in these markets is less formal, less structured and has fewer barriers than might be suspected. Individuals were able to enter high-level drug smuggling with few obstacles and progress up the ranks with relative ease. This was true of individuals who had positions of trust within organizations, responsible for handling large sums of money, drugs or both. Most subjects reported that willingness to tolerate risk was a key to being successful, and while many had involvement in other forms of crime, roughly the same number worked in legitimate forms of employment. The ability to speak Spanish and having family members involved in "the business" also afforded introduction and escalation in the sales of drugs at these higher levels. In sum, there appeared to be little in the way of technical requirements, specific skills, or apprenticeship periods to be served prior to ascending to higher levels of drug sales.

The second issue was the extent to which high-level drug smuggling involved the use of an organization. Reuter reports that many subjects used the term to describe their operations. Despite this, little evidence was found that the groups of individuals involved in drug smuggling represented formal organizations that could be compared to corporations or more organized forms of "organized crime". Some evidence was found for "hierarchical organizations" but they were not universal nor did they seem necessary to achieve success or profit at the high level of drug dealing. Few special skills were found among the dealers interviewed for this study and there was little evidence of information sharing or coordination of efforts across the loosely federated individuals involved in drug markets. Reuter and Haaga concluded that there was importing or distributing drugs at the highest levels did not require a well-coordinated organization. Rather, high-level drug importation and distribution was a series of transactions between otherwise unconnected, independent groups with little structure or permanence. These groups are described as "chains" that link one task in the importation or distribution without corresponding sharing of information between links in the chain that are not physically connected. Most chains appear to be rather short, and are formed around specific functions. The asymmetric nature of information flow across these chains works to prevent the formation of formal organizations of an enduring or effective nature. These distribution chains lack exclusivity as individuals at one level contract with different individuals at other levels.

There was little evidence that violence was necessary to succeed. Indeed, Reuter and Braga argue that violence is not a key feature of dealing at the high levels of drug markets, unlike much street-level drug dealing. Few of their subjects reported being threatened by violence, though it is worth noting that most of their subjects were recruited from low security prison institutions, and involvement in violence could disqualify an individual from being sent to such institutions.

Finally, they assessed the geographic bounds of the illegal drug market. They concluded that the market was national in scope rather than regional. This was based on prisoner reports about the lack of barriers to selling in different geographic markets than they traditionally operated in and the experiences of a small number of dealers who managed to deal drugs at a high level in different regions of the country.

Although this study includes too few importers, too many low-level drug dealers, and excludes Spanishspeaking inmates, it is best viewed as a first step in the research process, particularly as it concerns our study.

Reuter and Haaga record several conclusions that are important for our own work. First they note that while the refusal rate was a concern, conducting future interviews at higher level security prisons was likely to yield valuable information. They argued for the use of prison populations to understand highlevel drug markets. Second they found that even at the top of these markets there was little evidence of formal organization. This finding was viewed as problematic for enforcement against such high-level groups, since increasing the risk of arrest and imprisonment was made more difficult by this form of "organization". Reuter and Haaga conclude that enforcement efforts that increase the "price" of high level drug selling are likely to produce better results.

Rockwell International (1989) conducted the second major study of drug selling and smuggling that relied on interviews with prison inmates. Two hundred and fifty-four inmates from ten prisons, nine federal institutions and one state prison were approached to participate in a study examining the effect of deterrence strategies on drug smuggling; half agreed to participate For the purposes of the study "…deterrence is defined as that level of risk created when interdiction efforts are successful" (Rockwell International, 1989: 3). The premise behind this approach is that when risks are increased, those responsible for smuggling drugs will be affected and thus will be more likely to change their behavior. The study assumed that increasing the smugglers' perceptions of the probability of apprehension and imprisonment was a key to deterrence; increased risks would lead to increased costs and ultimately would halt drug smuggling efforts.

Just over half of the inmates were U.S. citizens, 14% were from Mexico, 17% were from Colombia, and 14% were from other nations. The modal age group was in the forties, accounting for two-fifths of the total. As a group, the smugglers had relatively few years of experience, 31% had smuggled less than a year prior to their arrest, 38% had smuggled between one and five years, and 25% had smuggled between six and 10 years. Interviewers collected data both about the inmate's perceptions of risk as well as any associates known to the inmate. Questions were posed about the potential impact of varying levels of the certainty of interdiction, imprisonment, gain, and risk. The study concluded initially that the concept of deterrence itself could be measured in valid ways.

The average perceived risk of interdiction among individuals in this sample was 30% chance of being caught although they reported that the chance of associates being caught was 13.5%. The "tipping point" for the decision not to smuggle drugs occurred at the 40% cutoff level. However, caution should be used in interpreting these data, as the questionnaire allowed for only four data points. Thus an artificial set of decision criteria were offered to subjects, and their responses may simply "fit" into a truncated set of response alternatives rather than actually representing the variety or range of decisions made by smugglers. It is interesting to observe that in every case, inmates indicated that their associates were more likely to smuggle at a given level of risk and reward than they were themselves. The authors conclude that the responses for associates were likely to be more reliable, as individual offenders tend to underestimate their own probabilities and offer more realistic responses for their associates. Many of the response scenarios required subjects to calculate two sets of probabilities (risk versus reward) for themselves and their associates. This requires both a complicated set of decision-making criteria as well as requiring offenders to think in strict quantitative terms. Previous work with offenders (Wright and Decker, 1994; Wright and Decker 1996; Cromwell, Avery and Olson, 1996) has documented the difficulty most offenders have in thinking in strict quantitative terms. For example, the Rockwell study takes offenders through a four-sequence response scenario in which they are asked to determine whether they would smuggle drugs for a four-level reward scale versus a four-level risk scale. Functionally, this requires offenders to determine both for themselves and for their associates 16 different risk/reward combinations—a difficult proposition.

The interviews provided some qualitative findings. First, larger-scale drug smugglers reported that the risk of apprehension was low if care and planning were adequate. Second, these high-level smugglers told interviewers that the interdiction efforts of the U.S. government were generally well publicized and did not require much in the way of intelligence. In addition, some said that they had not appreciated the consequences of cocaine use until after their imprisonment. Finally, the interviews described a typical smuggling operation. It consisted of one or two people who were responsible for setting up the deal, two to four people for transportation, and between four and six individuals to off-load the drugs. As the report notes, "Inmates were all to (sic) quick to put down the "Organized Crime" theory of large criminal families and stated almost all smuggler organizations contained 10 people or less." (Rockwell, 1989: 30).

The Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) provided the next advance in understanding the effect of deterrence on drug smuggling. This 1999 study examined "the effectiveness of the Frontier Shield pulse operation to deter drug trafficking in and around Puerto Rico" (1). The study used data based on a deterrence model to determine the balance between threshold interdiction rates and drug smuggling deterrence and the Rockwell estimates of deterrence as a gauge of the success of interdiction efforts. The study notes that most of the cost associated with cocaine is a product of import costs, a major component of which is the cost of interdiction. This is an asset-based study that is dependent on official data for its conclusions, and proceeds on the belief that "…drug traffickers operate at the lowest cost for the perceived risk" (I-3). The conceptual focus of the study builds on the notion that seizures alone are not the best measure of deterrence but rather the behavior of traffickers is a key to understanding deterrence strategies.

The study identified four specific levels of apprehension rates: lethal apprehension, personal apprehension, apprehension of associates, and vehicle and drug loss with no apprehension. In addition, the study differentiated deterrence between a source zone, transit zone and a production zone. The IDA study concluded that initial interdiction efforts in major source zone or production sectors produce the greatest deterrent effects. Moreover, deterring air transport of drugs was between 10 and 100 times more effective in disrupting supply levels than previous studies had established.²⁶

Perhaps the most important policy conclusion from the study was that a 2% interdiction rate was a key threshold for deterring drug interdiction. Any risk at or below that level was perceived to be part of the "cost of doing business" but that when risks exceeded that level they "got the attention" of smugglers. In contrast, the arrest of associates, loss of personal property, or loss of drugs required much higher thresholds of apprehension to produce deterrent effects. Thus merely seizing more drugs in the absence of arrest was unlikely to yield results in deterrence as smugglers regarded such losses as part of the cost of doing business. However, interdiction that resulted in arrest was likely to have a deterrent effect.

Griffith (1997) examines the role of drugs in the Caribbean and their relationship to political sovereignty in that region. It is his contention that drug smuggling and the economies that such activities create provide serious threats to the sovereignty of nations in that region. Griffith's work was designed to address three key questions, the nature and extent of drug dealing in the Caribbean, efforts to combat the problem, and the implications for security and sovereignty in the region.

Griffith provides extensive descriptions of the nature of drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean, based on his interviews with government officials, individuals charged with responding to shipments of illegal drugs and interviews with smugglers. He describes the organization of such shipping as a paradox; that is, many aspects of such groups include sophisticated planning, technology and communications; yet the groups themselves are not well-organized vertically and appear to exhibit few of the characteristics of formal organizations such as permanence, command structure, effective communication between ranks, and resource management. Griffith does report the use of GPS and tracking structures and notes that their utility is enhanced by the complicity of many actors in foreign governments. He characterizes traffickers as adaptive individuals who pay close attention to countermeasures taken by governments to interdict and deter drug shipments. Citing U.S. State Department reports (1991; 1992; 1993; 1994; and 1995) he documents a decline in the size (in kilos) of cocaine shipments of nine Caribbean countries, but notes that these declines may reflect the shift in transport strategies of smugglers rather than successful deterrence. Griffith concludes that many sources put the interdiction capture rate between fifteen and twenty-five percent for Caribbean drug shipments.

Few studies estimate the impact of interdiction and eradication efforts. This is a difficult enterprise as measures of changes in drug production, prices of drugs and changes in costs and transit routes are all difficult to develop. As a group, these studies conclude that government interdiction efforts produce little in the way of interdiction results.

Reuter, Crawford, and Cave (1988) measure the impact of increased military participation in interdiction efforts and conclude that increasing the resources available to the military for this purpose is not likely to reduce the availability of cocaine significantly. They argue that since 10% of the cost of cocaine comes from transportation costs, such interventions are not likely to pay dividends in increasing the costs of drugs and concomitantly drive smugglers out of the business or increase their costs significantly. The later work of Rydell and Everingham (1994) also find that interdiction efforts had little or no effect on reducing the level of smuggling or the cost of cocaine. Even herbicide spraying was found to have little success in reducing the availability of cocaine (GAO, 1999). Two years of far-ranging herbicide spraying of cocaine in Colombia did not result in declines in coca production; indeed, production increased 50% at the conclusion of this two year period.

Because these studies measure deterrence in terms of drug seizures, there is concern that the impact of interdiction may be underestimated. In an effort to address this concern, Caulkins, Crawford, and Reuter (1993) modeled a smuggler response to interdiction efforts. They concluded that in order to achieve any deterrent effect, all routes available to smugglers must be heavily interdicted. A similar study undertaken by Evidence Based Research (1995) found that increases in interdiction resources produced very small reductions in the success of interdiction efforts. These studies, however, suffer from relatively poor quality data.

A related approach has examined the effect of interdiction efforts on drug prices. The premise underlying such an approach is that measuring the direct response of drug producers and transporters is difficult and that such data are so fraught with measurement problems that they are unlikely to be valid indicators of the impact of interdiction. An alternative approach measures changes in the cost of drugs and argues that successful interdiction efforts will increase the cost of drugs as transporters are forced to take alternative steps, change routes, employ more lookouts, use more sophisticated technology, and tolerate more seized loads. Thus an increases in prices will result. Layne, Rhodes and Chester (2000) examined data provided by the U.S. Customs Service to determine the increase in the cost of transporting cocaine. Based on Reports of Investigations from Customs, they examined the impact of enforcement personnel, aircraft and technologies on the price of cocaine and found a direct link between enforcement activities and the costs of transportation. Specifically, they determined that every dollar spent on Customs enforcement produced a corresponding increase of 37 cents in the cost of transportation.

Riley (1993) summarized the general response to this line of research by expressing skepticism that interdiction efforts achieved their goal. He argued that the combination of low production 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

This brief review shows several common themes. First, drug smugglers have a high-level of sophistication and competence. This enables them to change their routes, tactics and methods of smuggling drugs on relatively short notice. There is ample evidence that both sophisticated and unsophisticated surveillance strategies are employed.

Second, all the authors note the relative lack of organizational structure that characterizes drug smuggling efforts. The observation that crime, even at a very high-level, lacks a formal organizational structures, is common to the research on the criminal enterprises. In describing organized crime, Ianni (1974) indicates that many of the organizational ties between individuals in group enterprises are of short duration, involve transactions of an immediate or time-bound nature (and do not create lasting commitments to a larger organization) and may be a reasonably accurate way of understanding the nature of social organizations in the 21st Century.

Williams (1998) argues that much of the inability of interdiction efforts has resulted from "…the failure to understand fully the structure of these [organizational] networks and their capacity to counter or circumvent law enforcement and military interdiction" (154). The view that dominates the current conceptualization of drug organizations is one of vertically integrated structures that resemble corporate structures of the 1980's. However, as Burt and Williams have observed, there are many cells within formal organizations that have access to information and technology. These cells can operate independently of the larger organizational structure, often in ways that the organization’s directors don't know about, don't understand and certainly can't control. Rather, Williams argues for the concept of networks or a series of connected nodes (individuals, organizations, firms, and information-sharing tools) that are linked across and within organizations. From this view, it is impossible to trace a straight vertical line from the bottom of an organization the top.

Networks can be linked within and across organizations, between and within functions, and can even include competitors. Many networks can be self-contained units in which no physical contact occurs with individuals in other networks. The insularity of these networks is a useful conceptual framework in considering the drug-smuggling process from point of production to final point of sale. Networks can cut across a variety of political, linguistic, legal, and geographic barriers. Because of their insular and selfcontained nature, networks can be more difficult to penetrate and deter than large organizations. In a large organization it may be possible to "flip" one individual and move up 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 reach a dead end. Networks are dynamic and capable of rapid change because they are based not on an existing structure but on the transfer of information (Abt, 1999). Thus, when one source for transportation of drugs is eliminated it is an easy matter to contract with another source outside the network of the first transporter. Williams notes that the information gathering done by the Cali cartel, the shift from smuggling drugs through the Caribbean to Mexico and the use of African locations for drug transshipment each represent the virtue of networks over organizations. Such loosely coupled organizations reflect the dynamic nature of ties between networks that often come together to accomplish a single purpose, and may disband or conduct future business. Such networks are able to respond to losses or threats more quickly and efficiently than organizations which are more tightly coupled and must "re-grow" connections or functions that may be impaired by arrest, conviction or seizure of assets. Evidence of this can be seen in the transition from the dominance of the Medellin cartel to the Cali cartels, to the current offices that independently operate the drug trade in Colombia (DEA, 1997). From this view, in a drug smuggling operation it is likely that individuals involved in a particular function do not know individuals in another function, making the penetration of such networks and intelligence gathering about them all the more complicated. The report The World Geopolitics of Drugs 1997/1998 observed that drug smuggling trends for 1997/1998 were consistent with those for previous years. The major trends included further decentralization of larger networks of drug smuggling organizations into smaller units and the increasing presence of "short networks", small self-contained groups linked only by function and need. It is not simply that organizations were getting smaller and more insular, they were linked only by function, information and immediate need with little permanent structure, durability of functional integration.

26 However, the basis on which this was established is difficult to determine from the study.

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