It is likely that criminal justice efforts to seek out and keep track of terrorists will become increasingly more sophisticated and successful. Acts which require much preparation and involve many people are less and less likely to succeed. Spontaneous acts of terror cannot be prevented, but they are a small percentage of terrorist acts. The incidence of state terror, in defensive or preemptive response to non-state terror, will likely increase. Once a tool or weapon exists, its use becomes tempting.
Governments are simply better at coming up with new methods.
Economic transnational crime will increase. For example, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, commerce and people move more freely, but so does economic and conventional criminals. U.S. law enforcement agencies are now predicting that drug cartels will buy legitimate firms in Mexico and use them as fronts to smuggle drugs into the United States. The future of transnational crime control is fairly obvious. I argued at the beginning of this course that internationalization is an ongoing trend and that will continue.