The Drug Enforcement Administration's CENTAC Program--An Effective Approach To Investigating Major Traffickers That Needs To Be Expanded

The Central Tactical Program was established by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to conduct investigations of major drug organizations. The Federal strategy for drug abuse and drug traffic prevention is aimed at immobilizing major drug organizations. The CENTAC program has proven to be an effective method of investigating and prosecuting large numbers of high level narcotics traffickers. Using few resources, Central Tactical investigations have accounted for a high number of arrests of major traffickers.

The CENTAC program has been successful, and program expansion is warranted. However, this is unlikely to occur given the DEA belief that the program is at its optimum level. Until DEA rigorously evaluates the benefits of its various programs, it will not be in a position to know whether to reallocate resources or to justify additional resources for CENTAC or CENTAC-type investigations. Illegally derived profits and assets must be taken if major drug trafficking organizations are to be immobilized. The CENTAC program investigations have left drug traffickers' drug-related assets virtually untouched. Some actions need to be taken by DEA to improve it efforts to take profits from drug organizations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: No director on record Team: No team on record Phone: No phone on record