There has recently been a great deal of discussion as to how to reduce police brutality. I don’t necessarily oppose attempts to reform police forces, but I doubt whether that sort of approach would be effective. In my view, the problem must be addressed indirectly. The primary problem is not too many police; it’s too many laws.
There are two obvious objections to my argument:
1. I’ve long advocated a reduction in laws, so my motives are suspect. Perhaps I’m just using recent events as an excuse to promote a libertarian agenda.
2. A reduction in the number of laws would not have helped in the case of George Floyd, who was detained (and then killed) over a counterfeiting charge.
Those are both good arguments. But it’s equally true that suspect motives don’t necessarily mean my argument is incorrect. And the fact that it would not have helped George Floyd doesn’t mean that it would not help in many, many other cases.
As a general rule, police have two types of interactions with the public. Traditionally, police were called in by victims of crimes. In these cases, the victims were happy to see the police show up and assist them.
During the 20th century, however, the police increasingly became a semi-military force that launched a war on significant segments of the population, including drug users/merchants, prostitutes, gamblers, possessors of illegal ammunition, tax evaders, and others. Whole communities are almost under siege, with paramilitary SWAT teams breaking into houses.
In 2014, Eric Garner died after telling the police “I can’t breath”. He was being arrested for selling individual cigarettes from low tax states. This crime would never have occurred if New York had not decided to adopt a highly regressive cigarette tax, aimed at behavior modification.
Prostitutes are often harassed by law enforcement, with police sometimes asking for special “favors”.
Police often barge into homes (without knocking) in search of drugs, illegal ammunition, and other contraband. This often leads to confusion, and innocent people are occasionally shot and killed.
If we were to dramatically reduce the number of laws, then the police would have less leverage to harass the public. Power corrupts, and the police will have an enormous amount of power in a country where thousands of consensual acts are illegal. Even minor infractions such as loitering and jaywalking are used as excuses to harass people, often members of minority groups.
Roughly 400,000 people are currently imprisoned for drug crimes, often activities that would not even be illegal in other states. We’d be much better off if the police were to focus on protecting us from violent criminals, not trying to tell us how to live our lives.
READER COMMENTS
Garrett
Jun 12 2020 at 2:48pm
Michael Huemer has been uploading lectures on anarcho-capitalism (see one here). The solutions to policing are especially interesting given the times.
Mark Z
Jun 12 2020 at 3:32pm
This is a good point. Just reducing funding in general presumably would lead to pay cuts and/or layoffs. The former could potentially lead to lower quality of policing, but the same ‘quantity’ of policing, which would not be good. Layoffs alone may just lead police to reduce policing of violent and property crimes – the things they should be policing – because those are the things it’s most dangerous to police, and if police are rational (and especially if they think they’re resented by their communities) they will prioritize their own safety. Reduce resources allocated to law enforcement and reduce the number of laws being enforced. That means fewer confrontations, fewer fatalities, without potentially undermining enforcement of laws protecting personal and property rights.
JFA
Jun 12 2020 at 4:02pm
“This crime would never have occurred if New York had not decided to adopt a highly regressive cigarette tax, aimed at behavior modification.”
This seems in tension with your support for carbon taxes. You just don’t seem to agree with the goal a changing smoking behavior. Would it have been better if the encounter was caused by him selling untaxed gasoline?
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:02pm
There are externalities with climate change. With smoking its pure paternalism.
RPLong
Jun 13 2020 at 8:37am
Smoking has a special name for its externalities, “secondhand smoke,” along with an extensive literature studying its many adverse effects.
Jose Pablo
Jun 21 2020 at 12:52pm
There are alternative ways of handling “second hand smoking” without using pigouvian taxes and this ways can be enforced without police intervention. And you can always avoid being harmed by “second hand smoking” as long as you retain the capacity of “walking away”.
These don´t apply to climate change.
All “externalities” are not created equal. “Climate change” belongs to a very specific type of “externalities” that require public intervention. It is a non sequitur that this means that all “externalities” you can think of require public intervention.
A long list of personal behaviours (from going for a walk in a crowed venue to farting) cause “externalities”. It does not mean government should impose a pigouvian tax on farting or that this activity should be regulated and this regulation extrictly enforced by the police.
Russ Abbott
Jun 12 2020 at 4:13pm
Can’t disagree with Scott’s final sentence: We’d be much better off if the police were to focus on protecting us from violent criminals, not trying to tell us how to live our lives.
But it’s also too glib. The first thing that comes to mind are traffic laws. Isn’t that telling us how to live our lives? But Scott, do you really want to eliminate them?
How about a more difficult example: mandatory mask-wearing. Scott, where do you stand on that?
It’s not that I disagree with the overall principle; it’s just that our world is much too complex for one to expect simple answers to solve our problems.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:05pm
I see traffic laws as protecting us from reckless motorists.
I am opposed to mandatory mask wearing, although I’d like to see the government encourage that behavior. It would be nice if President Trump set an example.
On the other hand, there are externalities from mask wearing in a pandemic, so it’s a close call. Personally, I wear a mask on the rare occasions when I’m mixing with other people in an indoor space.
Mark Z
Jun 12 2020 at 6:34pm
I’d also add that violating traffic laws typically leads to a small fine; presumably the same would be true of mask-wearing laws, so there’s little incentive to run, resist, or for police to use aggressive tactics (e.g., raid your house because they caught you on a security camera not wearing a mask). The enforcement of carbon taxes, mentioned above, would also not be particularly confrontational. Contrast such laws with drug laws and some other nonviolent offenses, where being caught means prison, sometimes for a very long time. Going from the status quo to treating those laws the way we treat traffic violation would likely solve most of the problem.
Russ Abbott
Jun 12 2020 at 9:10pm
Come on Scott. The primary benefit of traffic laws is the reduction in accidents, not prevention of harm from violent individuals. If you think traffic laws are good because they reduce harm overall, you are opening yourself up for many debates about the effects of various laws and regulations.
Russ Abbott
Jun 13 2020 at 1:31am
Scott, I know you are a consequentialist. Is it your position that laws should be judged strictly by their consequences? If so, how did you intend this post to refine or clarify that position?
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2020 at 2:05pm
Reckless driving endangers others. Pot smoking and prostitution does not.
Peter
Jun 13 2020 at 6:14pm
You are being disgengious here, the primary benefit for those that actually passed that legislation and enforce it is revenue generation. Everything else is just a fairytale to we like to tell ourselves.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 13 2020 at 7:38am
There is question about which traffic laws need to be enforced by armed officers. Also, some traffic confrontations occur when the officer looks for drugs.
zeke5123
Jun 12 2020 at 4:54pm
Agreed with this post. A couple of things to add.
We should actually hire more cops (while having them police fewer things). It seems that generally the odds of getting caught do more to deter violent crime compared to the penalty. So, I think more police would actually lead to less police interactions (because there will be less crime).
In a country of 330m, there will always be a few bad apples. From another perspective, we want homicide to be zero, but understand because humans are flawed errors will happen. That the above solutions don’t solve the Floyd killing doesn’t mean anything; the question is whether we get to a very low-level + accountability while making sure the crime rate doesn’t jump.
RPLong
Jun 13 2020 at 8:41am
Fewer laws would be nice. Also, it would be nice if there were less of a “law mentality” among people in general. What I mean by that is that it would be nice if people had more of an inclination to solve problems without getting laws involved. It would be nice if people thought twice before calling the police; if they thought twice about demanding new laws to govern behavior; if they thought twice about adhering strictly to rules and guidelines when policies can safely be questioned.
Michael Stack
Jun 13 2020 at 10:44am
I remember as a kid wondering why a police department would have a ‘vice’ department – why have a special department for those types of crimes?
The answer I think is because the investigation of those crimes is done very differently than standard crimes. There is no victim to complain, nobody involved wants the police involved, etc.
Michael S.
Jun 13 2020 at 11:32am
I share your prior about less laws, and your proposal would undoubtedly help. It is about making a second best solution more efficient.
I think the actual point of confrontation would remain, though. The US has a large underclass, and outsources dealing with it to law enforcement. Both the ensuing armed conflict and the collateral damage follow necessarily.
Sure you could pursue the conflict more efficiently. I’m afraid it’s both hard to achieve and impossible to create any enthusiasm for it. Now if you could reduce the underclass, like in the rest of the developed world… Needless to say, the goal of less socialism, not more, is not profiting from the protests
It’s a bit callous to say, but G. Floyd did die in vain, as his death is ill make the root causes worse, not better
Weir
Jun 14 2020 at 7:09am
Alex Tabarrok said this week that “on a per-capita basis we employ 35% fewer police than the world average.”
America spends more on prisons than police. And as Daniel Bier said in 2019, “Only one US state had a higher police-to-prison ratio than any European country.”
There’s less law enforcement, in America, than the world average, and more incarceration.
Michael S.
Jun 14 2020 at 6:52pm
I read Alex T.’s post. Makes sense, in a doing things better kind of way.
On the other hand, halving police headcount here in Germany wouldn’t lead to riots and looting. Maybe we do some right things.
Phil H
Jun 13 2020 at 11:42pm
I was a bit bewildered by some of the conversations about the lockdown in the American media. We went through a very strict lockdown here in China, and I personally did not see a single police officer the entire time, nor were there any reports of the police being involved in the lockdown. I suppose, eventually, far down the line, if you had persistent lockdown breakers, then you would have had police involvement. But they definitely weren’t the first line. It was all done on an administrative level, and by local neighbourhood authorities. So the question of how “criminal” it was to break lockdown never even arose.
JdL
Jun 15 2020 at 9:01am
Absolutely correct. My sense, though, is that existing police forces in America are too rotten to be saved by redirecting their energies. I think they should be disbanded and their (service) responsibilities taken over by private security firms.
MikeDC
Jun 15 2020 at 9:21am
I think reducing some unnecessary laws will help, but the major problem here that needs to be acknowledged is that, when drugs and alcohol are involved, “peaceful encounters” often become violent.
If one looks at the killing of Rayshard Brooks, it seems that what happened is he was given a sobriety test, appeared to be intoxicated, and then resisted arrest, to the point where he fought back against the arresting officers and fired a taser he had grabbed from one of them.
The officer is now apparently facing a felony murder charge.
I would say:
Based on the facts as they seem to be laid out, a felony murder charge isn’t appropriate. People, even police officers, should have the right to defend themselves. I think George Floyd’s killer should face a murder charge. If the facts are as stated here, the person who shot Brooks should not.
That being said, the fundamental problem here is that nobody thinks we should just let drunk drivers “go about their business”.
Which means, basically, you have be willing to use force against a person who’s not of sound mind.
I don’t think there’s any simple way out of the problem, but probably lots of methods could be used to minimize the possibility of violence, death, and lasting injury. Training police well in improved methods, funding them well, and rethinking the liability balance (they should be liable in the George Floyd kind of cases but maybe not in the Rayshard Brooks sort of cases) is probably the best that can be done.
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