In the developments regarding the prevention of organised crime in the Netherlands two important measures are evident at the national level: the Dutch anti-money laundering intervention and the Dutch screening and auditing approach. In addition, the Amsterdam City Council developed a unique local preventive approach towards organised crime. These three measures are the main preventive measures taken against organised crime in the Netherlands. Moreover, these measures illustrate that organised crime is a problem at all levels of society and that all of these levels – international, national and local – offer possibilities to fight the problem. Therefore, these three measures were chosen as the subject of this research. The anti-money laundering intervention was selected because it is the first measure to specifically focus on the prevention of organised crime. Because it involves the implementation of European directives, it is an example of an international strategy to address a global problem.49 Notwithstanding the fact that this research concentrates on Dutch measures, this intervention clearly indicates that it is impossible to exclude international, in particular European, influences on the national scene. The screening and auditing approach was selected, because it is, along with the previous intervention, the most extensive preventive measure against organised crime in the Netherlands. Moreover, this intervention is an example of Dutch policy influencing European developments regarding the exclusion of criminal organisations from tendering procedures and refusing them permits and subsidies. Finally, the administrative approach of Amsterdam was selected because it is a project presented by local as well as national authorities as one of
49 See the 1995 United Nations conference report on transnational organised crime (Williams and Savona, 1996: 167).
the most progressive and unique interventions in the Netherlands and, indeed, in the European Union.
The programme evaluations are the connecting thread in this research. Three chapters focus on the selected preventive measures. Chapter 2 looks at the Dutch anti-money laundering intervention; Chapter 3 describes the Dutch screening and auditing approach; and Chapter 4 looks at the administrative approach of Amsterdam. These chapters are composed of the three elements of the programme evaluation described earlier. After an introduction to the problem and the policy developments, these chapters go on to assess the programme theory. A third section concerns the assessment of the programme process. Finally, the fourth section comprises the impact assessment.
Answering the three research questions for each of these selected measures makes this research orderly, but also rather extensive. Consequently, it was necessary to limit the programme evaluation to its core elements. In order to reconstruct the programme theory and uncover the perceived problems of the selected measures, the most effort was put into studying the programme documents, such as the explanatory memoranda to the acts and the plans of action of the measures. The advantage of these sources lies in the fact that they are almost always available. Moreover, reasoning based on these documents is clearly verifiable. The disadvantage of this method is that the more implicit assumptions and various underlying objectives and expectations cannot be described. Consequently, the assessment of the programme theory is limited to evaluating the policy as it is officially written. As a result, the programme theory includes the assumptions explicitated in official documents as well as the more implicit theory as it is reconstructed.
Furthermore, the decision to select three preventive measures made it impossible to gather information first-hand or carry out data-aimed research. Instead, existing information is used to describe the implementation process and the measures’ impact as much as possible. For assessing the process and for the impact assessment, the acts and plans themselves and the explanatory memoranda are studied, as well as other relevant literature. In general this includes technical literature and articles and opinions of persons and institutions involved in carrying out the measures. Annual reports and existing evaluative studies were drawn upon to determine the outputs of the measures. For the assessment of the measures, the programme development stage plays an important role (Rossi, Freeman and Lipsey, 1999: 44). The Dutch anti-money laundering intervention was established more then ten years ago, meaning its outputs and outcomes can be evaluated in order to determine the presumed effectiveness. The administrative approach of Amsterdam has been established but is still developing. This latter aspect makes it difficult to reach final conclusions. The Dutch screening and auditing approach is innovative. Due to its short time of implementation some problems in the implementation process have yet to be ironed out. The first two measures were recently evaluated. The last measure came into force only in mid-2003. Therefore, no evaluation has yet
taken place. In this case our impact assessment is mainly limited to general remarks and indications.
With the understanding that the evaluation of the three measures cannot be intensive, one might ask why this method was followed. The subject of this research is the preventive approach towards organised crime in the Netherlands and the aim is to judge the effectiveness of the preventive approach. Because of the wide variety of preventive measures, this study could not be limited to just one measure. Neither was delving into all the initiatives taken in the framework of organised crime prevention a feasible option. That led to the selection of the three main preventive measures taken against organised crime in the Netherlands. The systematic use of the same elements of programme evaluation gives not only good insight into the different measures, it also enables comparison of these insights and for general judgements to be made regarding the effectiveness of organised crime prevention in the country. Chapter 5 presents these general judgements. This final chapter revisits policy-makers’ enthusiasm for the preventive approach against organised crime and looks at whether this enthusiasm is justified.