Measuring Illegal Border Crossing Between Ports of Entry
An Assessment of Four Promising Methods
Download
Download Free Electronic Document
Full Document
| Format | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PDF file | 0.2 MB | Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience. |
Summary Only
| Format | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PDF file | 0.1 MB | Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience. |
Purchase
Purchase Print Copy
| Format | List Price | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add to Cart | Paperback24 pages | $15.00 | $12.00 20% Web Discount |
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is responsible for controlling the flow of goods and people across the U.S. border, a difficult task that raises challenging resource management questions about how best to minimize illicit flows across the border while facilitating legitimate ones. Commonly reported border control measures, such as numbers of illegal migrants apprehended or miles of border under effective control, bear only an indirect and uncertain relationship to the border control mission, making them unreliable management tools. Fundamental to the question of border control effectiveness is the proportion of illicit border crossings that are prevented through either deterrence or apprehension. Estimating these proportions requires knowing the total flow of illicit goods or border crossings, but compelling methods for producing such estimates do not yet exist. This short paper describes four innovative approaches to estimating the total flow of illicit border crossings between ports of entry. Each is sufficiently promising to warrant further attention for purposes of supporting reliable, valid, and timely measures of illicit cross-border flow. Successfully implementing each of these approaches will require methodological development and analysis to identify barriers or constraints to using the approach, the cost of data collection, and the amount of error that can be expected in the resulting estimates.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Why Estimate Flow?
Chapter Two
Four Promising Methods
Chapter Three
Discussion
Research conducted by
The research described in this report was conducted within the Homeland Security and Defense Center, a joint center of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment and the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Occasional paper series. RAND occasional papers may include an informed perspective on a timely policy issue, a discussion of new research methodologies, essays, a paper presented at a conference, or a summary of work in progress. All RAND occasional papers undergo rigorous peer review to help ensure that they meet high standards for research quality and objectivity.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.