Cathy Haenlein

Cathy Haenlein, the director of organised crime and policing studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said when a government increases the number police officers, it can result in longer court backlogs and another prison crisis. “Police, courts, prisons – all of these areas are inter-related. The challenge is to make sure actions don’t have unintended consequences, such as exacerbating backlogs in courts or pressure on prisons. We’ve already seen police recently asked to arrest fewer offenders. Swiftness and certainty of punishment are the important factors in terms of deterrence. If the whole system is not working this is unlikely to be achieved,” she said.

As cocaine production in South America rises, and street prices in Europe stagnate, traffickers appear to be favouring bigger shipments. That may explain why the amount of seized cocaine in Europe is increasing even as the number of individual seizures has declined since 2019, says Cathy Haenlein from the Royal United Services Institute (rusi), a think-tank in London. Meanwhile, higher levels of automation and digitisation at big ports are, paradoxically, facilitating new security breaches for gangs to exploit. Increasingly, they steal container-reference codes to nab cargo with cocaine smuggled into it. Corrupt workers can receive as much as 15% of the drugs’ value in return for their help, according to Europol. Others are blackmailed.

In October the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) marked 10 years in operation, a decade that has seen significant international operations, substantial convictions and drug seizures, and major technological advances; but as Cathy Haenlein, Director of Organised Crime & Policing at the Royal United Services Institute explains, the threat to the UK from serious and organised crime is on the rise, and policing alone cannot overcome that threat.