Doesn’t help that a big chunk of the competent criminals have fully or partially internationalized their operations which acts as a very strong shield against LE.
The politicians wanted the immediate appearance of effectiveness over real effectiveness, top police brass wanted to keep their jobs, and rank and file police got to do ineffective work that made little difference.
It's a nice morality tale, and I'm sure there are instances where it is absolutely true. But that it is true as a rule, or even that they are comparable levels of analysis (one are "white collar" crimes and the parallel would be "blue collar" crimes, no? But street crimes and immigration offenses aren't working mans crimes - these are "no collar" crimes: anyone can commit an immigration offense, even rich people. And street crimes are often drug driven.
This analysis by Gottschalk and Wacquant suggests a "conspiracy" tone within a class war context. I would want to know if they didn't have some class war bias in their analysis before I accept their analysis from authority without examination.