It may be time to examine fundamental questions related to the use of such partnership structures. When and under what specific conditions should task forces be disbanded? Notably, no one formally and publicly catalogs the creation or existence of task forces. As such, there is no official roster, or task force census, of federally led task forces operating around the country or even in a particular region, nor is there an inventory of those task forces targeting specific threats. Moreover, it outlines how this coordination is pivotal to 21 st century federal policing. While this report acknowledges that law enforcement coordination may be influenced by many mechanisms including task forces, fusion centers, memoranda of understanding, and interagency agreements, among other things, the bulk of the report focuses on the use of task forces and intelligence sharing entities such as fusion centers. Nonetheless, they are federally backed and important to national strategies and policing efforts. Realities Promoting Law Enforcement Coordination

In recent decades, a number of realities have helped foster a need for increased coordination between federal law enforcement agencies and their state and local counterparts, particularly along the Southwest border. For one, borders or boundaries often enhance criminal operations. Criminals exploit borders to their advantage, profiting from the movement of black market goods across state and national boundaries. Task forces and fusion centers may be developed for a number of reasons, including overcoming jurisdictional limitations and leveraging expertise and resources—both money and manpower. Roots of Federally Led Counterdrug and Counterterrorism Task Forces

The task force concept in federal law enforcement is not new. The New York task force led to DEA's creation of a State and Local Task Force Program. While not all task forces are multijurisdictional (some may consist of law enforcement agencies within the same jurisdictional confines (e.g., city, county, state, etc. Further, these multijurisdictional task forces can be used to counter a wide array of threats posed by criminal networks, or they can be tailored to concentrate efforts on a particular criminal activity. Tallying Task Forces Countering Illegal Drugs and Terrorism along the Southwest Border

One of the challenges in trying to understand the breadth of task force activity in any given geographic region involves establishing exactly how many are active in the area. No central , widely available repository of such information —a task force census— exists, and law enforcement agencies may be reticent to part with the specific locations of their collaborative efforts. Without such information it is difficult to measure exactly how much cooperation is occurring. How much cooperation is enough? How can we ascertain whether task force programs in various agencies overlap each other's work, especially if they target the same class or category criminals (such as drug traffickers or violent gangs)? Nevertheless, Executive Branch responses to such issues could greatly inform congressional policy making. To be included in the list, a task force had to exhibit the possibility of either directly or indirectly combatting drug trafficking or terrorism. Thus, task forces devoted to fighting gangs, violent crime, public corruption, capturing fugitives, and money laundering may be included. They are highlighted in this report as notable information sharing efforts because of their relevance to federal policing. Coordination Startup

Task forces, fusion centers, and other collaborative efforts can be initiated legislatively, administratively, or through a combination of the two. Much as suggested elsewhere in this report (see Tallying Task forces , Countering Illegal Drugs and Terrorism along the Southwest Border ; and Dissolving Coordinating Units ), at the federal level, no uniform metrics exist for either the evaluation of task forces or of the federal strategies that may employ them. This can involve a number of permutations such as evaluating the success of a particular class of task forces. Using a Common Language

For law enforcement task forces and interagency intelligence sharing bodies, as with many other organizations, measuring success can be characterized as involving the assessment of inputs , outputs , and outcomes . Likewise it is disingenuous to suggest that law enforcement output is not tied to outcome. More narrowly, should the success of law enforcement coordination be judged in terms of task force work (output), impact (outcome), or some combination of these? ONDCP has outlined one broad "indicator" of enhanced information sharing in task forces as well as fusion centers: 
[i]ncreased number of criminal intelligence databases relevant to the Southwest border or counternarcotics to which the following entities have access: El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) Fusion Center, International Organized Crime and Intelligence Operations Center (IOC-2), Southwest border HIDTAs, ICE HSI's National Bulk Cash Smuggling Center (BCSC), and state and major urban area fusion centers in the Southwest border region. At another level, what is less clear is exactly how effectively a task force supports a given strategy.
Federally led law enforcement task forces and intelligence information sharing centers are ubiquitous in domestic policing. They are launched at the local, state, and national levels and respond to a variety of challenges such as violent crime, criminal gangs, terrorism, white-collar crime, public corruption, even intelligence sharing. This report focuses on those task forces and information sharing efforts that respond to federal counterdrug and counterterrorism priorities in the Southwest border region. More generally, the report also offers context for examining law enforcement coordination. It delineates how this coordination is vital to 21st century federal policing and traces some of the roots of recent cooperative police endeavors.
Policy makers interested in federal law enforcement task force operations may confront a number of fundamental issues. Many of these can be captured under three simple questions:
1. When should task forces be born? 2. When should they die? 3. What overarching metrics should be used to evaluate their lives?
Task forces are born out of a number of realities that foster a need for increased coordination between federal law enforcement agencies and their state and local counterparts. These realities are particularly evident at the Southwest border. Namely, official boundaries often enhance criminal schemes but can constrain law enforcement efforts. Criminals use geography to their advantage, profiting from the movement of black market goods across state and national boundaries. At the same time, police have to stop at their own jurisdictional boundaries. Globalization may aggravate such geographical influences. In response, task forces ideally leverage expertise and resources—including money and manpower to confront such challenges. Identifying instances where geography, globalization, and criminal threat come together to merit the creation of task forces is arguably a process best left to informed experts. Thus, police and policy makers can be involved in highlighting important law enforcement issues warranting the creation of task forces. Task forces, fusion centers, and other collaborative policing efforts can be initiated legislatively, administratively, or through a combination of the two, and they can die through these same channels.
While some clarity exists regarding the circumstances governing the creation of task forces, it is less clear when they should die and how their performance should be measured. Two basic difficulties muddy any evaluation of the life cycles of law enforcement task forces.
First, and in the simplest of terms, at the federal level no one officially and publicly tallies task force numbers. The lack of an interagency "task force census" creates a cascading set of conceptual problems.
Without such information, it is challenging, if not impossible, to measure how much cooperation is occurring, let alone how much cooperation on a particular threat is necessary. Concurrently, it may be difficult to establish when specific task forces should be disbanded or when funding for a particular class of task forces (e.g., violent crime, drug trafficking, counterterrorism) should be scaled back. Additionally, how can policy makers ascertain whether task force programs run by different agencies duplicate each other's work, especially if they target the same class or category of criminals (such as drug traffickers or violent gangs)? For example, do the violent crime task forces led by one agency complement, compete with, or duplicate the work of another's?
To give a very broad sense of federal task force activity in one geographic area, CRS compiled a list of task forces and fusion centers operating along the Southwest border, which are geographically depicted in this report. To be included in the list, a task force had to exhibit the possibility of either directly or indirectly combatting drug trafficking or terrorism. Thus, task forces devoted to fighting gangs, violent crime, public corruption, capturing fugitives, and money laundering may be included.
Second, there is no general framework to understand the life trajectory of any given task force or class of task forces. What key milestones mark the development and decline of task forces? (Can such a set of milestones even be produced?) How many task forces outlive their supposed value because no thresholds regarding their productivity are established? Though federal law enforcement has embraced the task force concept, it has not agreed on the breadth or duration of such cooperation. Such lack of accord extends to measuring the work of task forces. This report suggests a way of conceptualizing these matters by framing task force efforts and federal strategies tied to them in terms of input, output, and outcome—core ideas that can be used to study all sorts of organizations and programs, including those in law enforcement.
An official task force census coupled with a conceptual framework for understanding and potentially measuring their operations across agencies could greatly assist policy making tied to federal policing throughout the country, and particularly along the Southwest border.