Guess that depends. With any encryption program there are risks, like the risk of losing the decryption key. And most times if someone steals a laptop, it's to sell it, not mine it for personal data.

There are no guarantees with anything these days, or any point in the past and likely future. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

What might actually be more useful, is a lowjack type program for your system. I know Apple has something like this for their iPhone and iPad, called Find my iPhone... You just need to find the equivalent for your laptop. So say any time it's connected to the Internet, it pings a specific server giving an IP address, which law enforcement agencies can then have the ISP turn into an address. Or at least a fairly specific geographical region, where odds are there's someone known to the police living, which then gives them probable cause to get a search warrant, etc.