Reply to Juliana Gómez-Quintero, Spencer Chainey, and Hervé Borrion, ‘A Method for Organized Crime Harm Assessment: Connecting Associated Crimes’

Abstract

Abstract In this article we reply to the article “A Method for Organized Crime Harm Assessment: Connecting Associated Crimes”, which Juliana Gómez-Quintero, Spencer Chainey, and Hervé Borrion published in Policing. Our criticisms are twofold: (1) it mischaracterizes our method, the “Harm Assessment Framework,” which we first presented in 2013 in complementary articles and, consequently, it delivers unwarranted criticisms of our framework; (2) it, relatedly, does not fully recognize the many ways in which the authors’ proposed ‘Organized Crime Harm Assessment’ (OCHA) draws from our framework and, by extension, it overstates the OCHA’s novelty. In addition, we react to a further, more plausible criticism of our method and discuss some apparent weaknesses of the proposed OCHA. Finally, we re-emphasize our conviction that assessing the consequences of criminal policies—especially on organized crime—is a crucial undertaking that has the potential to improve the effectiveness, justification, and legitimacy of the policies.