Barriers to Assessing the Financial Impact of Transnational Organized Crime

This paper explores ten barriers that face those who would seek to measure the financial impact of transnational organized crime. They include conceptual and definitional confusion, limitations of official crime statistics and crime victimisation surveys, problems in assigning multipliers and unit costs, difficulties in estimating indirect harms to individuals and business, lack of data on offender productivity losses and second generation costs, and challenges in accounting for the value of confiscated assets. Although some may be resolved with enhanced resourcing and research, others are unlikely to be ever capable of effective resolution. The paper concludes by presenting the results of an illustrative assessment conducted in Australia in 2015.