I would like to conclude by saying, as I mentioned in response to Mr. Dechert's questions, we certainly don't ignore or not acknowledge the problem of organized crime. You have a very difficult task ahead of you here. Somebody is saying, “Fix organized crime. How do we do that?” That's not a very easy question to answer.
I'm not sure, and our organization is not sure, that ramping up the law is the way to do that. If you create new laws that are aimed at targeting organized crime but do more than that, you're going to divert system resources away from organized crime to people who are maybe less serious criminals. There may be places to tweak the law. There may be places where the law can be adjusted--maybe toughened up in certain places, maybe not toughened up in certain places. That's your task, and it's a very big task to figure out where exactly those places are.
But I think an over-response from the criminal justice system would not necessarily be the right answer. I think you need a collaborative approach, as has been suggested here, that involves communities working with police and members of communities to find ways to prevent members of communities from getting involved in criminal activities and organized crime.
The analogy can be drawn to changes in the medical system where there is a new approach to preventative medicine. Rather than waiting until somebody is sick to deal with the problem, deal with the problem before somebody gets sick. I think dealing with the criminal justice system can be compared to dealing with things in the hospital when somebody is already in triage and you're trying to figure out what to do with them. It might be better to focus police resources and community resources on preventing people from getting there in the first place.
Once they're there, it may be time to focus more targeted police resources on the most serious criminals, rather than focusing on drug crime. Let's see who the real kingpins are and try to get to those people, rather than addressing a situation more broadly that may require a more narrow response. So I would close with saying that.
Thank you again for inviting us to be here. I wish you the best of luck with your ongoing review.