Overall, crime rates in Queensland, as in Australia as a whole, have increased significantly over the past decades, and police clearance rates have been dropping. The Queensland police reports, however, do not provide a clear picture of the gap between the increasing crime rate and police effectiveness in responding to it. Organized crime -- defined as "serious crime committed in a systematic way involving a number of people and substantial planning and organization, sophisticated methods, and techniques" -- is a serious problem, and the police are hampered in controlling it due to police structural weaknesses and lack of resources. A primary enterprise in organized crime is the laundering of its criminal profits through financial institutions. Once criminal profits have been introduced into the legitimate financial market, they can be used in legitimate businesses and politics. Other significant problems for law enforcement are the policing of immigrant communities where cultural and language barriers exist and the coordination of intelligence collection and dissemination among many and diverse agencies. 11 charts, 3 tables