When Criminals Out-Smart the State: Understanding the Learning Capacity of Colombian Drug Trafficking Organizations

• NCJ Number: 196842
• Journal: Transnational Organized Crime Volume: 5 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 1999 Pages: 97-119
• Author(s): Michael Kenney
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 23 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: University of Florida; National Science Foundation
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This article examines why the Colombian Government has been unable to reduce drug production and transportation within its national territory by presumably weaker non-state actors.

Abstract

Several popular explanations have emerged from studies of this issue. One common view is that the Colombian Government lacks sufficient anti-drug resources. Others insist that the Colombian Government's will to implement an effective anti-drug policy has been compromised by government corruption. Supporters of the latter view argue that the Colombian Government must undergo substantial institutional reforms before it can resolve its narcotics problem. These arguments do not provide a full explanation of the ineffectiveness of the Colombian Government's anti-drug efforts. They fail to analyze the characteristics of the non-state actors that manage the production and distribution of illicit drugs in the Western Hemisphere. These criminal enterprises have proven to be innovative and highly adaptive, skills that have enabled them to maintain the profitability of their activities while surviving persistent government efforts to eradicate them. Although a number of government officials and researchers have long recognized the flexibility and resilience of Colombian trafficking organizations, there have been no attempts to develop a systematic, learning-based explanation for how these criminal enterprises respond to state anti-drug efforts. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary body of literature on organizational and social learning, this article argues that Colombian drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) alter their behavior in response to past experience and new information, store this knowledge in routines, procedures, and the collective memory of organizational members, and select and retain innovations that produce satisfactory outcomes. Flexible adaptation based on an analysis of ways to circumvent government anti-drug policies helps explain why the illicit drug industry persists in Colombia in spite of the government's having dismantled several core organizations, including the Medellin and Cali groups. 52 notes