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Home Front: Culture Wars
Financial incentives have given us ever more aggressive policing ‐ if we want real change, we must change those incentives
2020-06-11
Several shiny bright ideas from left-Libertarian academic Jason Brennan.
[MarketWatch] Over the past 50 years, as racism has waned, American police have become ever more aggressive. Violent crime has dropped since 1994, but our criminal system became even more punitive. For every bullet the German police fired on duty in 2016, American police killed 10 people. Even overwhelmingly white states like Wyoming and Montana imprison citizens at higher rates than authoritarian Cuba.

[snip]

The drug war also licensed police departments to seize cash and property on mere suspicion that they might be connected to drug trafficking. Innocent victims almost never win back their money. The Justice Department’s "equitable sharing program" ensures much of the seized money — $657 million in 2013 alone — enhances police and other local government budgets. In 2015, the Obama administration curbed some of these practices, but still permit the majority of seizures, which come from local police activity and seizures from joint tasks forces. Unfortunately, most states do not disclose the total amounts seized under these laws.

We authorize and pay police to steal from us for their own benefit. Police in Tehana, Texas, stole $3 million from innocent minority drivers between 2006 and 2008, until an ACLU lawsuit ended the practice.

[snip]

Here are just six ways we can alter the financial incentives; there are other options as well, but the logic of these is relatively easy to see.

• Repeal civil asset forfeiture laws.
• Disband SWAT teams in any town smaller than 100,000 people.
• Don't allow towns to keep revenue from tickets and fines; instead place that revenue in victim restitution funds.
• Remove laws immunizing police from civil and criminal penalties.
• Enable citizens to sue police for excessive or inappropriate violence; pay resulting judgments from police pension funds or salary pools, rather than general taxes.
• Make police salary raise pools dependent upon measured community satisfaction.

If we change the incentives, we change behavior.
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