All I’m asking for is pretty simple…stop resisting arrest and let the courts adjudicate the matter. Seems like a natural win/win for all parties.
I embedded this principle in an essay I drafted but never published, called “Rule of Law Matters.” RLM uses three principles:
1. The rights of policemen to issue orders are circumscribed by laws. Police who give improper orders, meaning orders that violate a civilian’s rights, will be fined or imprisoned based on the severity of the violation.
2. Civilians are absolutely obligated to obey any policeman’s order, even one that violates (1). Failure to obey any order is a crime that will be punished through the court system.
3. When a civilian violates a policeman’s order, including an order to stop and face arrest, there will be no physical attempt to enforce that order. If necessary, the civilian will be identified and tracked and later brought before a court to face punishment.
Point (1) should be adjudicated in the courts, not be anyone resisting arrest.
Point (2) is the commenter’s point. Note that contra Michael Huemer, I endorse a duty to obey.
Point (3) is an attempt to take the violence out of arrests. The assumption is that if you cannot arrest someone peacefully right away, you can do so later, and in the meantime little or no harm will have been done. The less plausible that is, the more one has to countenance the use of force during arrests.
If 90% of men are offered a bondage experience with another man it is their natural reaction to resist. Restraint should only be used as a last resort. A peaceable attempt to discuss the problem should be offered first, even if this includes a trip to the police station.
“Restraint should only be used as a last resort. A peaceable attempt to discuss the problem should be offered first”
And, this is already the policy of 100% of law enforcement agencies in the U.S., so you’re point is completely lost on me.
“If 90% of men are offered a bondage experience with another man it is their natural reaction to resist.”
Since the vast majority of arrests are not accompanied by resisting arrest, I’m thinking that your 90% number is off by quite a bit (to state it lightly).
Also, there are a lot of female LEOs out there.
There are a number of issues at play; for instance, the number of cops I have known who have been injured by drunk drivers – driving with suspended licenses or no license – is absurd. Parole violations are quite common, and often violent. So there is a very reasonable understanding among the police that (3) does not hold. They make the assumption that people who should be under arrest and who are evading it, even rather passively, are likely to do dangerous or deadly things while out on their own.
My problem with #3 is that it seems to create an advantage for resisting arrest. If you run, they can’t physically stop you so why wouldn’t everyone run? I suspect the belief that the police are going to shoot you if you run, is the only reason the majority of violent criminals allow themselves to be arrested.
I appreciate the idea that police should minimize violence though. I’m just not sure this is striking the right balance. #1 and #2 seem self evidently correct though.
“I suspect the belief that the police are going to shoot you if you run, is the only reason the majority of violent criminals allow themselves to be arrested.”
Note: It’s not legal to shoot an assailant for the mere fact that he is running from an arrest. The use of lethal force requires the threat of grave bodily injury to yourself or others to be sustained as justified use of self-defense.
The TV shows all have cops chasing those that run.
I think that’s the general issue, and few think that they’ll “get away” by running.
Tho, admittedly, it’s the ones not thinking straight that will either run or fight rather than give in the overwhelming force cops (can) have.
Games and TV shows do show hot pursuit, but Steve Sailer likes to say that they (specifically he speaks of Grand Theft Auto) also show that once one evades hot pursuit and lies low for a few days, the police just forget about you. This makes sense as a game mechanic or in a TV show, but the real world doesn’t work like that. However, lots of people seem to have trouble distinguishing between TV and other video-based media and reality. I recall a story an actor from a popular show told of being accosted by a viewer who called him by the name of his character and insisted that he tell some other character in the show that “she’s up to no good”. He tried to explain to the viewer that he’s just an actor who follows script, not the character. The viewer said yes, I understand that, but you tell her…
When a civilian violates a policeman’s order, including an order to stop and face arrest, there will be no physical attempt to enforce that order. If necessary, the civilian will be identified and tracked and later brought before a court to face punishment.
How? If there’s no physical attempt to stop the order, what’s to stop me from refusing to be arrested when I’m “identified and tracked and later brought before a court to face punishment”?
Look, the theory is that police can legally use violence because they’re trained to do so with restraint and within the bounds of the law. Like it or not, removing this and police are reduced to yelling “Stop, or I’ll yell ‘Stop’ again!”
This policy sounds analogous to what happened to discipline in the worst performing schools. A rule that can’t be enforced isn’t much of a rule.
The idea would be that police can’t use lethal force to effect an arrest unless the suspect presents a potentially lethal threat to the officer or others. But the officer can still physically grab and hold the suspect or use a taser and get help from other officers if they aren’t capable of restraining the suspect themselves. And they can add resisting arrest to the list of charges.
Bottom line — don’t shoot unarmed suspects, but go ahead and tackle or use the taser.
Cops almost never shoot unarmed suspects, and cops who do shoot unarmed subjects usually believe the subjects are in fact armed and potentially dangerous (e.g. Tamir Rice or Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend who fired on the cops) or are otherwise a serious threat to their person (e.g. Michael Brown).
This also wouldn’t do anything about the George Floyd case.
“Cops almost never shoot unarmed suspects…”
Who am I going to believe — you or all the lying dashcam/security camera/body camera footage?
The main problem with the Breonna Taylor case (as with MANY similar incidents) is cops bashing down doors in the middle of the night leaving dazed, just woken residents with no idea who has just forced their way into their home. The jack-booted, amped-up, midnight SWAT raids that produce one tragedy after another need to END. There is simply no excuse for this practice.
So, how would you like to conduct felony warrant arrests then? You have a better approach that minimizes the risks for all parties involved and still results in the end goal of arresting an accused felon based on probable cause? Or, maybe we are just supposed to tolerate violent felons wandering the streets until they decide to give themselves up?
Latching onto a few extremely isolated incidents (as you have done) is not likely to lead you to a reasonable approach. Unfortunately bad stuff is going to occur under any approach. It’s just inevitable when dealing with potentially violent situations that unfold in seconds or nano-seconds.
Also, the body cam footage over the past 5+ years overwhelming supports the law enforcement narrative over the police abuse narrative. It’s not even close.
“Point (3) is an attempt to take the violence out of arrests. The assumption is that if you cannot arrest someone peacefully right away, you can do so later, and in the meantime little or no harm will have been done. The less plausible that is, the more one has to countenance the use of force during arrests.”
How often do you think this happens? Do you have any particular reason to believe violence is used unnecessarily in a statistically significant number of cases? Would “cops should use force against violent arrest resistors less often” pass a Null Hypothesis test on overall societal welfare?
Alex has a post about Walgreens in SF having to close because so many people brazenly shoplift that they can’t make money anymore. What exactly do you think is going to happen in an instance like this. Man walks in. Fills backpack with stuff. Starts to walk out. Cop says to stop. Perp says no. What is the cop to do in that situation? Just let it happen? If he identifies and tracks him, what exactly do you think “later brought before the court” means if not “some other cop will use force when the perp later resists arrest just like he did the first time.”
I think resisting arrest is a grave offense that should be drastically punished. It’s terrible for society and deserves very harsh treatment, to the level that its an obvious deterrent to such behavior.
People resisting unjust orders don’t need to violently resist arrest, they have other means of adjudicating their claims.
Satarists already got this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQIRD57lls8
I’m somewhat surprised that you aren’t willing to address the elephant in the room as you are normally so apt at doing:
In 2018, blacks made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and committed about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.
Literally all of the debates that we are having on this topic are due solely to black male perpetrators and their unwillingness or inability to commit less crimes and to peacefully submit themselves to arrest.
If the perpetrators were white and they were justifiably killed for resisting arrest, we would be yawning from boredom.
Sure, though the principle obviously extends everywhere. No doubt many of the junkies I’ve been told are turning CA into a dump are white.
The question is simply, what do you plan to do when someone doesn’t want to be arrested. Are you willing to kill over it, if the person continually plays escalate.
If you can’t answer yes, you don’t believe in the law.
I will add something else.
There are police who are enforcing laws and orders that are perfectly legitimate in our system (legal, on the books), but are nonetheless considered illegitimate by some who have not been able to persuade enough citizens through the democratic process to overturn such laws.
So someone shoplifting might say something like “it shouldn’t be wrong because I’m poor and I need it, if society won’t provide me with what I feel I need this is justified” or “society has discriminated against me and this is my taking back what I deserve from society” or “incarceration shouldn’t even be part of our justice system so I’m obligated to resist arrest”. Note that last one resulted in two hung juries I know of, one from my wife trials and one from a friends recent trial. They had a young liberal ideologue who went all single holdout on them.
There are people who feel certain laws unjust, but the answer is rarely to attack a police officer or destroy property.
I suppose the premise makes sense if one suspends their beliefs of the current situation and potential negative effects of this system. Unlike others here I see #1 as the practical problem – police officer discipline/consequences is the exception rather than the norm. #2 and #3 presuppose #1 in some form or fashion. I would also add that to practically effect #3 one would need to apply a dystopian level police surveillance (e.g. ubiquitous face recognition so that offenders could be identified and tracked) which may be a greater aggregate harm.
“The assumption is that if you cannot arrest someone peacefully right away, you can do so later, and in the meantime little or no harm will have been done.”
Problems with this:
1) this assumes that the assailant is peacefully resisting or fleeing arrest. What to do in situations when he isn’t? Most of the high profile cases have deadly weapons involved as part of the resisting arrest.
2) this assumes that the assailant will not present a threat to others during the time from initial detainment to the ultimate arrest (read: lawsuits against the police department for not having arrested a legitimate assailant who then goes on to perpetuate additional crimes).
3) this assumes that it is easy to identify and track assailants. (read: you’re gonna need a lot more police services for this, so be prepared to open your wallet).
4) this assumes that the subsequent arrest will somehow be more peaceful than the initial detainment. Have you seen what felony warrant arrests look like in practice?
In a well functioning system I’d be tempted to agree wholeheartedly, but I don’t think that’s the state we are in.
I see 2 basic problems with this formulation:
1) The process is the punishment – jail time, bail, lawyers, etc, etc are ruinously expensive, humiliating and dangerous.
2) Once you are in the court system odds are stacked anyone but the most affluent – by some accounts 90-95% of cases are plea bargained – those are not numbers of a well functioning system.
So, if simply getting arrested is the functional equivalent of getting prosecuted is it any surprise that people resist?
3)
A quick plea bargain takes away a lot of the “ruinously expensive, humiliating and dangerous” where “The process is the punishment”.
It also forces innocent people to voluntarily sign up for a criminal record that will ruin their employment prospects.
Fortunately, most criminals are serial offenders with long rap sheets. So, the possibility of an innocent defendant doing a plea deal for one crime is more than offset by his other crimes.
Getting convicted of a felony is not equivalent to catching the common cold. It does requires intent + an illegal action of some sort that is provable beyond a reasonable doubt.
Unlike you, I still believe in the American ideal of a justice system – that people are innocent until proven guilty. A system that is so broken that over 90% of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining is not a system is even remotely attempting to provide justice.
>Fortunately, most criminals are serial offenders with long rap sheets
Given the lack of mens rea required to commit a felony, this is very true. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find any adult that is not committing multiple felonies a day.
I don’t know that I would call a system with such byzantine laws that a person of good will can’t help but violate the law a fortunate situation, but I guess that’s a normative assertion and te gusta
@Chris
“A system that is so broken that over 90% of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining is not a system is even remotely attempting to provide justice.”
And, you know that how? The defendant is given the VOLUNTARY OPTION to plea bargain vs. a jury trial. The fact that 90% opt for the plea bargain is prima facie evidence of injustice? Huh? I’m thinking that there might be a few pieces missing from your argument.
Also, I’m a big fan of the way you’ve framed it – anyone that disagrees with you must be against innocent until proven guilty. Excellent!
The “voluntary” option of pleading guilty to something that you didn’t do vs spending tens of thousands of dollars to go through the excruciating process of trial, often sitting in jail and unable to provide for your family, to risk the uncertainty of being found guilty of a much harsher crime that you know you didn’t commit.
You framed it that way, justifying punishing an innocent offender by assuming/asserting that they did other crimes.
You should read this Review of “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” by William J. Stuntz. TL;DR:
I’ve never been in trouble with the law. It doesn’t seem particularly hard to do.
Are most people with a criminal record the kind of people applying for the jobs that reject people with a criminal record? My grocery store advertises over the loud speaker that people with a criminal record should apply for employment. Most of the skilled trades don’t seem to care, provided you aren’t a habitual offender. Were any of these people going to be doctors or lawyers? I mean I guess its harder to get a professional job in some big company, but that was never were most hood rats ended up anyway.
In Japan 100% of cases end in conviction. Yet they seem satisfied.
I completely agree that a plea bargain offered to an innocent person is not a good thing. An innocent person serving a sentence is a very bad thing. I hope it doesn’t come across as crass to say that fortunately that only happens in a very small percentage of cases.
You can’t possibly know that as 90-95% of cases never go to trial to determine guilt – you are simply asserting it must be true.
As far as I know, that is the consensus of researchers in the field. There is usually some evidence before anyone is even charged. People don’t get just randomly arrested and hauled before a judge.
“some evidence” isn’t proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
And there is a question of how many innocent people’s lives ruined is too many? Are most of them guilty? probably – but that isn’t the right threshold.
“but that isn’t the right threshold.”
You’re hiding an awful lot of information in “most”. If most means 51% are guilty, then yes that’s a tragedy. If most is 99.99% are guilty, it’s not. I know that we grow up hearing “better a hundred guilty go free then one innocent be suffer”, but its not clear to me anyone would literally want that ratio to be held. Even the original phrase states “*ten* guilty go free for one innocent”m not a hundred. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where most people who committed crimes went unpunished.
Some studies show it could be between 2-8%. But assume that’s overstated and it’s only 1% – that means there are 20,000 people serving sentences as we speak that found it preferable to serve time on a plea deal than risk sentences that are many times worse by actually going to trial.
It’s not good when people serve sentences for crimes they didn’t commit. It is also bad when people who do commit crimes aren’t convicted and commit more crimes.
As the old saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” How can things be changed to bring down the first without an unacceptable increase in the second?
What nobody has mentioned is that innocent people are taking pleas because prosecutors overcharge the crime and add on so many additional charges that the risk of losing in court is too great to take the chance. Do a bit of reading on ‘coercive plea bargaining’.
It should be noted that plea bargains aren’t only used against street criminals who “must be guilty of something”. A number of people involved with Donald Trump have been accused of crimes, maybe politically motivated, in the hopes of getting them to implicate him, and then allowed to plead guilty to something like “lying to the FBI” because otherwise “the process is the punishment.”
do you have a point? or are you hoping I have TDS and will twist my principles to defend one wrong at the expense of another?
No, I was actually speaking to those who might think there is no problem at all with the American criminal justice system because anyone who is charged “is probably guilty of something.”
I was saying that there is some justice to your concern.
Do we have any decent data on the likely proportion of innocent people wrongly accused by police of serious crimes (assault, grand theft, burglary, rape, murder), or just crime in general?
If nearly all of those plea bargaining are doing so because they know they’re guilty, that would only be concerning in the sense that they may be getting off with too light of a sentence. It would be a problem if, say, 10% of that group were actually innocent and just using a plea bargain system to avoid hassle/risk.
Justin – Some studies show it could be between 2-8%. But assume that’s overstated and it’s only 1% – that means there are 20,000 people serving sentences as we speak that found it preferable to serve time on a plea deal than risk sentences that are many times worse by actually going to trial.
Context: out of a prison population of roughly 2 million in the U.S. or roughly 1%.
Reality check: any system, unless you are insisting on a 100% burden of proof (whatever that means) is going to generate false positives. It’s unavoidable, sorry.
My earlier point was mostly lost on you so it bears repeating: most felony offenders are serial offenders. If anything, this implies that the innocent population in prison is much lower than your analysis implies, at least on an expected value basis.
We aren’t talking about false positives – we are talking about a system so broken that the better option for defendants is to do time for something that they didn’t do than allow the legal process to work itself out.
all you have done is projected your biases onto the system and asserted something that confirms your priors. 1% (or higher) voluntary incarceration is *way* too high. justifying it through ‘most of them are criminals anyway’ is so morally repugnant that it is no wonder you simply can’t see why so many see the whole system as illegitimate.
Chris,
I don’t know what to tell you. I mean if I knew that 100 people would be murdered to keep one innocent person from being convicted of murder, its not super clear that is morally justified.
nice bait and switch – the vast majority of crimes we are talking about have nothing to do with murder and emphasizing the tiny minority just makes desire to operate in bad faith quite evident.
@chris “We aren’t talking about false positives – we are talking about a system so broken that the better option for defendants is to do time for something that they didn’t do than allow the legal process to work itself out.”
YOU CANNOT ASSUME THAT. I realize that is shouting but it is important. Whether accepting a plea bargain for something you didn’t do is “a better option for defendants” depends on a lot of things. How much evidence against you does the prosecutor have? If you are innocent, there probably won’t be a lot. How big is the difference between the sentence you are offered and what you would get if found guilty? How good is your public defender? If you can convince him/her of your innocence, you may get a pretty good defense.
In your scenarios, the prosecutor thinks you’re guilty and you know you’re not. In a world of perfect information, you wouldn’t have to prove your innocence. But this is our gd world and no matter what the “justice system” consists of, the people in charge would think you are guilty and you would have to jump through various hoops. There is no perfect system out there where no innocent people go to prison and no guilty people go free. All real world systems will be “broken” to some degree.
@roger – spend some time talking to defense attorneys and re-evaluate.
In my slight acquaintance with criminal defense lawyers, they generally say, “I know most of my clients are guilty but my job is to get them the best outcome I can.”
Which we understand to mean, “I know most of my clients are guilty but my job is to get them the best outcome I can, given the way the system works.”
@Roger Sweeny
That was obviously not the answer that Chris was looking for. But, my limited experience in talking with defense attorneys is similar to yours.
Not sure what Chris is trying to accomplish with having us gather anecdotal information from non-neutral sources, but oh well.
Chris described my views on these matters as “morally repugnant.” Wearing that like a badge of honor.
Arnold, we have ample evidence that the courts have no interest in enforcing (1)*, and instead hold police to lower, not higher, standards than the rest of us. We also have ample evidence that the police are not particularly interested in (3). They already have that option, and do not chose to use it.
This offer is akin to when I tell my daughter I’ll buy her a real unicorn as soon as she finds one on Craigslist.
As for
“2. Civilians are absolutely obligated to obey any policeman’s order, even one that violates (1). Failure to obey any order is a crime that will be punished through the court system.”
Well, perhaps you are familiar with the phrase “Never Again.” The rule of law is quite important, but not quite as important as natural rights. Unless ‘the system’ shows me that I can rely in 1) and 3) as you laid out, I’m not going to provide it with 2).
*Actually, lots of courts do, but they are bound by the the Supreme Court.
–“3. When a civilian violates a policeman’s order, including an order to stop and face arrest, there will be no physical attempt to enforce that order. If necessary, the civilian will be identified and tracked and later brought before a court to face punishment.”–
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this mean that no one will ever be able to be arrested if they don’t want to be? Won’t pretty much everyone just run or fight when the cops try to take them into custody, requiring the cops to stand down per rule 1?
Per #2: Following an order that is prima facie, clearly wrong commands NO obedience, and in fact arguably commands DISobedience.
And, you would be completely foolhardy to follow your own advice and I highly doubt that you would. What are you going to possibly win by disobeying? And, are you gonna introduce a knife or gun into the situation as part of the disobeying? Please solve for the equilibrium.
At the very least, you will have won nothing and will have a misdemeanor or felony resisting arrest charge tacked on to whatever other issue was going on.
You can be disobedient without resisting arrest or engaging in acts of violence. There was literally a giant mass movement that did this back in the 1960s and got a lot of laws changed, you may have heard of it…
The problem is that a lot of things people don’t want to be arrested for also don’t have a lot of public support for repealing. People do in fact think that people shouldn’t be able to shoplift, beat their wife, etc without the police getting involved.
Arnold, about police, read this
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/narcissism-nyt-foreign-coverage
and this
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/10/rational-criminals-irrational-lawmakers.html
I left a comment on the MR post. The first one reminds us of how sick the NYT owners and staff are.
Making (1) an effective reality would require, as an absolute minimum, the abolition of qualified immunity.
It also seems relevant that in many other developed countries, if I understand correctly, resisting arrest is not a crime. This includes (per Wikipedia) Denmark, Norway, and Taiwan, none of which strike me as countries that have trouble getting their citizens to obey the police when needed. Of course, you can argue which way the causation goes.
Nope – no need to eliminate qualified immunity to get to 1). In fact, 1) already exists in the U.S.
Hint: the plaintiffs bar goes after the party or parties with the deepest pockets or the highest insurance. The individual police officers themselves do not have deep pockets.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-usa-louisville-idUSKBN26621G
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2020/09/03/botham-jeans-family-files-lawsuit-against-apartments-where-he-was-killed/
Qualified immunity was granted because police felt they would be unduly punished for actions that they saw as legitimate, in part because they matched current law and established regulations. Nobody wants to get thrown under the bus because of a political fad, and people don’t like seeing their co-workers thrown under the bus so they stick together. I think their evaluation of the situation was basically correct.
There is no epidemic of police misconduct. It’s not backed up by the numbers. The police do already have pretty good controls in place to regulate behavior. The application of anti-police political pressure and oversight has NO TRACK RECORD of improving community outcomes. It’s the same story every time. Arrests down. Crime up. More death.
“Qualified immunity was granted because police felt they would be unduly punished for actions that they saw as legitimate”
I’m curious why you think it is the police who should be deciding what is “legitimate” and not the public at large. Thought it is darkly ironic that you call this out. It was the Supreme Court that decided that the police need not be restrained by the constitution when they were trying to evict some black clergymen from a diner full of nice white people in violation of the Klu Klux Klan act. Importantly, the SC didn’t decide that they didn’t violate the black men’s rights, only that they should be immune from the consequences of doing so because it might make them think twice in doing so.
The public at large does decide what’s legitimate. There are laws and regulations regarding how the police behave, and if they violate them then qualified immunity doesn’t save them. Police and entire police departments are convicted of misconduct all the time, and we have governing bodies that investigate and keep tabs on this stuff.
What isn’t legitimate is a mob seeing a cell phone video or reading a headline and deciding on the spot that someone is guilty of something whether or not the evidence supports guilt of any kind. It’s also not legitimate for demagogues to feed that mob justice for their own political and personal purposes.
Police enforce laws. If you don’t like those laws, you change them. You don’t need mob justice, shootouts with police, or burning your local downtown to do that.
In fact it’s when you generally CAN’T convince your fellow citizens that these people resort to violence. King did get Jim Crow laws changed. He didn’t get the Kendi style racial communism laws he wanted in the late 1960s. That’s when he started talking about, you know, these riots are just like people speaking truth to power bro. It’s why he went from icon to pariah in just a couple of years, and why we lie or cover up basically everything he did after civil rights.
1. The current formal standard is “objectively reasonable,” that is a judge or jury determines whether the use of force was objectively reasonable in compelling compliance consistent with the 4th amendment. See:
https://www.policefoundation.org/general-resources/use-of-force-infographic/
Presumably by this you are proposing a strict liability standard? That is, the judge or jury would be unable to take into account the officer’s state of mind when making the reasonableness determination? Would this apply to 3 as well? That is, if the officer makes an arrest using force, even if it was objectively reasonable force, but could have identified the suspect and potentially made an arrest at a later date without using force, then you would have the officer fined or imprisoned?
We are seeing now what such a policy would look like in Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, where police have been ordered not to arrest shoplifters and looters. Perhaps as an economist you might consider a shopkeeper’s perspective on such a policy. Perhaps shops are no longer needed in the age of Amazon so there is no public interest in preserving shopkeepers’s property rights? A libertarian dilemma I suppose, trading off property rights for freedom from use of force in policing.
2. This is already the actual law in most states, that is, you can be arrested for resisting arrest even if the arrest turns out to be unlawful. But how would this work in combination with 3? The police say stop, you are under arrest, but the suspect decides to walk away and ignores the order: resisting arrest? Would saying I had my ear buds in and didn’t hear be a defense? Would police removing ear buds be a reasonable use of force even if they could wait until the suspect removes the ear buds to make the arrest? Will the resisting arrest charges accrue? At some point, say after two dozen walk away, can the police use force to make the arrest? Have you done the suspect any favors by allowing them to rack up more charges?
3. How do you define violence? Most definitions refer to an exercise of physical force. An arrest, that is the seizing of someone to take into custody, is by definition an exercise of physical force. If you want to have no arrests, just judicial orders to appear before a court, how would failures to appear be enforced?
Yes, police brutality is a problem and perpetrators should be prosecuted. But no, radical reform of current policy will not produce much in the way of net gains.
Where radical reform is needed is in overall freedom. With a score of 86, the USA ranks 52nd on the Freedom House freedom rankings. Libertarians would have us more closely emulate Singapore with its score of 50. Populists would have us emulate Norway with its score of 100. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores
Singapore has an incarceration rate of 199 per 100,000 population, Norway 60.
If the USA adopted a more democratic political system like Norway’s, we would be less likely to be waging legal warfare on our own people.
“If the USA adopted a more democratic political system like Norway’s, we would be less likely to be waging legal warfare on our own people.”
Likewise, if the citizens of the U.S. behaved in a manner similar to that of their Norwegian counterparts, then we could adopt a criminal justice system much more similar to that of Norway.
Until you’ve solved for that chicken/egg problem, there probably isn’t much to see here.
My impression is that there is a strong inverse correlation between quality of elementary education and involvement in the judicial system. Therefore my preferred explanation for the difference in crime rates between the USA and the Nordic countries is to reject Dr. King’s null hypothesis (http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/pisa-scores-by-race-and-country/ ) and to believe, however naively, blindly, and without supporting evidence, that children trapped in USA public schools in low income neighborhoods substantially fail to achieve their full potential, but, that low income children in more democratic countries are more likely to achieve to their full potential. My preferred hypothesis is that more democracy produces more accountability, and in particular, in the schools. A second best formulation is that political power of teachers unions is inversely correlated with education outcomes. In the Nordic countries, multiparty proportional representation prevents national teachers unions from having disproportionate control of a political party. The worse USA teachers perform, the more they can extort.
Again, I cannot prove this, but that is why I am so fond of this blog: the null hypothesis is a worthy challenge.
The children at the lower end are hit by a triple whammy: low IQs + single parent households + counterproductive cultural environments.
Expecting schools to be able to fix this seems like a bridge too far to me.
Maybe I’m wrong and someone has some good data on charter schools?
* In a review of 15 randomized control trial studies on academic effects of urban charter schools, 12 showed significant benefits for reading and math, three showed no effects, and none showed negative effects.
* Studies in three states have demonstrated that attending charter high schools boosts college entry and persistence.
* Studies in two districts have shown that attending charter schools decreases criminal activity.
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/issues-2020-charter-schools-benefits-for-low-income-minority-students
I think the hardest parts of the Null Hypothesis are scaling and persistence.
I can believe that people who want in a charter school are a self selected group. And I can believe some unique genie in a bottle magic can happen at a single charter school. And I can believe that you can improve say the test scores of some 4th graders.
It’s harder to believe that you can do all those at scale for the whole population and have it persist into adulthood.
I’d be more optimistic about things like reducing criminal behavior than closing academic or earnings gaps. But that ain’t nothing.
Regardless, the whole educational system, to the degree it is publicly financed, should essentially be a voucher system.
If a school is a disaster, at the very least you don’t need to stay at that school.
Yes, that’s fine – let’s do charter schools in the urban areas.
But, to imply or assume that the students in those charter schools are going to be magically transformed by schooling alone is a leap that I’m not willing to take.
Despite the moniker, I think there’s room to question whether Freedom House’s rankings accurately represent the level of freedom in a society.
I note that “Are individuals able to exercise the right to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference from state or nonstate actors?” appears to be the only item in the rankings that relates directly to property ownership and use, and it makes up only 4% of the ranking. Moreover, I suspect that “undue interference” might not be interpreted as including aggressive schemes of economic redistribution, so long as such schemes are enacted through a democratic process.
On the other hand, another 4% is given to “Do laws, policies, and practices guarantee equal treatment of various segments of the population?” Reading the entry for the United Kingdom, I see that they get points for anti-discrimination laws, but lose points because these laws aren’t 100% effective—meaning, I suppose, that Freedom House thinks they should be stricter and more aggressively enforced. But such laws are an infringement upon the liberty of employers and the proprietors of businesses, who’re compelled to abide by them whether they will or no.
Wikipedia informs us that Freedom House was established in 1941, and many of its founders seem to have been New Deal figures, Eleanor Roosevelt among them. It seems likely that their definition of freedom is closer to FDR’s Four Freedoms, including “freedom from want”, than to one in which individuals enjoy maximum liberty so long as they don’t encroach on the rights of others.
You make a good point, but Norway is freer than the USA on other indices as well. For example, on Cato’s Human Freedom Index Norway is tied for 10th and the USA is at 17. https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new
And on the World Index of Moral Freedom the USA came in 28th while Norway was at 20.
In general it seems that the consensus democracies out perform the majoritarian countries like the USA, an assertion made by Arend Lijphart in his Patterns of Democracy. An excellent and highly readable case against the USA constitution is provided in Robert A. Dahl’s How Democratic is the US Constitution?
The USA political system has strongly Burkean anti-populist tendencies such as widespread opposition to popular sovereignty in favor of kritarchic \juridical absolutist control over elected officials, a belief in the purity of the elite class relative to the rabble classes, the notion that what is best for the elites is best for the country and the lower classes, and the belief that democracy is about how the elites can best control the country. Consequently we have the present dysfunction. Democratic reforms like adopting a parliamentary multi -party system with proportional representation and authorizing national referenda would likely improve conditions and freedom for US citizens.
Kling is taking the most charitable view of BLM, and building RLM as a rational, constructive compromise.
What if the charitable view isn’t correct? What if BLM is more interested in political power and humiliating domestic political rivals or is fueled by a hodge podge of other grievances with the world? What if the members calling for full blown revolution, death to the USA, and death of the nuclear family are more central to the passions and intent behind BLM and the concerns over police brutality are a strategic ruse? In this case, improvements to policing won’t help. Policy improvements would still be a good idea, regardless, but they won’t address the concerns of BLM or turn down the heat.
Indeed.
(2) has some obvious breakdown points. E.g., a police officer orders someone to perform a sexual act. Is one legally obligated to obey, even knowing it’s an unlawful order, and then just wait to litigate in court? The thing about police malfeasance is, the police officer(s) committing it is often in a good position to ensure there’s no evidence of malfeasance, and if it’s just the word of a civilian vs. that of a cop, historically, the criminal justice system and the jury would almost always side with the cop. Frivolous accusations of police malfeasance are also probably common, so trying to litigate these things after the fact will lead to both a lot of false positives and a lot of false negatives.
I imagine the reality that civilians will resist certain abuses is itself a deterrent against committing them for an amoral police officer. He knows that if he abuses his authority egregiously, he’s likely going to have use force, make a dubious arrest, potentially kill someone, and those things could get him in a lot more trouble than a civilian filing an unprovable complaint against him. Universal dashcams, bodycams, and elimination of police unions would probably be necessary to make ‘do what they say and litigate the matter after the fact’ palatable (and turning off one’s dashcam or bodycam would have to be taken as evidence against the accused).
Of course, more surveillance is likely a good idea in any case, and I think it’d render such reforms fairly moot. If both parties know they’re on camera and are rational, they’ll avoid incriminating themselves; if one is not rational, well they’re not gonna care about the prospect of being caught later anyway.
What if we don’t agree on what “police abuse” is? I mean we have instances wear body cam footage is pretty clear, but people can’t seem to agree on whether the cop did anything wrong (I’m not saying both sides are right, one side might be objectively correct, but its not going to stop the disagreement).
Body cams were a big part of 2015 BLM, but in the end they mostly exonerated the cops rather than damned them, and so now some elements of BLM actually opposed body cams.
I continue to believe the main issue is that disparities in life outcomes can’t be discussed honestly, and so there is friction between The Narrative and real life events. Body Cam footage simply brings out more unpleasant reality, which makes The Narrative push back even harder. And of course body cam footage can be clipped or edited to push whatever line one wants in the public, much as it was with George Floyd.
Finally, there is a whole class of people that just doesn’t seem to get how unpleasant dealing with our underclass, mentally ill, and junkies really is. All of the “humane” responses seem to end with something like six figures a year spent on street shiters and CHAZ.
Everyone may not agree what is police abuse, but there are certainly things everyone would agree are instances of police abuse, like my example. That’s a clear case where a person should have every right to disobey. If nothing else, this itself can be litigated after the fact. For example, if cop pulled over a woman for a traffic violation and tried to force himself on her and she ran away, I think it’d be absurd to convict her of resisting. On the other hand, someone who gets pulled over for speeding who was not actually speeding reacts by flooring it and leading police on a high speed chase, that’s different. Whether one’s disobedience was lawful can be settled in court; there’s no reason to flat out outlaw disobedience.
I agree that body cams didn’t change much. But there are there kinds of surveillance that have been found to reduce crime rates. Collecting DNA from arrestees, for example. Surveillance cameras as well I believe. Generally, making it harder to not get caught reduces crime, which means fewer potentially violent confrontations, even if it doesn’t affect the confrontations themselves.
“… and later brought before a court to face punishment”
Brought how? They didn’t want to get arrested the first time. Do we have to wait until they turn themselves in or change their minds and decide to come peacefully?
If they continue to resist and the answer remains no physical attempt to enforce, then either you are going to encourage a lot more resistance as suspects are incentivized to keep resisting police forever, or you will have to threaten them with some kind of coercion harsh enough to make them come on their own, imposed without benefit of trial.
At any rate, it is naive to take bad excuses seriously, and the truth is that law enforcement policies are just a bad excuse and not the real issue. Revealed preference is that no one really cares: they are just pretending to in bad faith, and there is no good reason to take the distracting bait and entertain that pretense. No one riots, loots, burns, or protests mostly peacefully when the cops kill any other kind of person, just as no one riots, loots, burns, or protests when lots more people get killed by increases in numbers of criminal homicides.
Only one particular kind of incident involving one particular kind of death has been found to be reliably useful for whipping up anger, discord, and chaos for political benefit. Cops are already giving up on physically enforcing arrests without any need for official policy changes and it will tend to work out poorly.
Wow – the second to last paragraph is off-the-charts good. Thank you for it!
Unfortunately, it will only work out poorly in Black / Negro majority areas.
Sort of like Muslim dominated no-go areas in Paris, where the tribal Muslim majority enforces it’s own “laws” instead of the majority French.
So from the White point of view, “who cares?” will be the usual, and normal, and hard to say insensitive (but it will be called that), response. That’s long been the response, secret or open, of Asian & Hispanic Americans.
There are plenty of good white neighborhoods that have spillover problems from this, if not now then perhaps over time as demographics move around. It’s not like they aren’t having riots and street shitters in the good part of town these days.
Besides, having tiny islands of civilization just means they are really really expensive and the kind of people that want to start families there can’t afford to.
#3 is so unrealistic and silly, I’m surprised any “Libertarian” could even suggest it.
Rules, and laws, and “rule” in general, mean using force against disobedience.
I recall decades ago arguing about what I call “real Law” being the laws that are enforced. Like the “real” speed limit is some 10 mph higher than the listed speed limit — almost all (90%?, 99%?) speed limit tickets are 10 mph over the limit or more. (That’s a fact – but I don’t know what the actual/ factual number is for 2019 based on US traffic citations). The “real law” is the limit that is enforced.
With force. Up to and including deadly force. Including force for income tax payments, or gun registration, or drug use.
The Libertarian position I remember is “Don’t pass a law you’re unwilling to enforce with deadly force, if necessary.” That’s actually a strong statement about limiting the laws passed.
Enforcement of law, in general and in every single specific incident (like not allowing illegal sale of single cigarrettes), requires acceptance of the possibility that those enforcing the law will use “too much force.”
All enforcement is subject to both types of positive and negative errors, too much or not enough. Too much force and it’s brutal, too little and some cops get hurt. Or killed. I think the current balance actually has too many cops killed for “optimal” balance.
Like as used
Given the externalities of smoking (including that such people will inevitably need expensive state paid for medical care at some point), doesn’t it make sense to tax it to internalize those externalities?
If someone tries to get around those taxes, aren’t they just trying to free ride the system?
So the police say “stop doing this and accept the legal penalties we have imposed to deter your behavior.” The perp says “no, unless you physically force me to stop, I’m going to do whatever the heck I want.” I don’t see how this or any other law of tax stands unless the response in that case is to escalate. Cops will probably try to use non-lethal force but its difficult with large obese non0compliant individuals with lots of health issues.
“Given the externalities of smoking (including that such people will inevitably need expensive state paid for medical care at some point), doesn’t it make sense to tax it to internalize those externalities?”
My recollection from the literature is that smokers die early enough (on average) that the upfront medical costs are more than offset by the savings from foregone social security and medicare benefits. So, there probably isn’t an externality to that needs to be addressed. I wonder how the average smoker’s lifetime externality costs compare to the lifetime externality costs of your pre-existing health conditions?
Note: I’m enjoying some Copenhagen snuff as I write this, so full disclosure on my bias.
That’s a possibility, the math is complicated. There are also the expenses related to providers dying young. Maybe those studies by the cig companies are eight though.
Nonetheless, the assumption that they have externalities is the basis of the law. It’s the same logic behind liquor taxes and the rest. Presumably, there is some product being taxed for externalities and somebody somewhere that is trying to dodge that tax and the law will be enforced.
Of course if we follow your logic on cigs then we ought to subsidize harmful products in the hope that they kill people earlier and reduce SS and Medicare expense.
If you want to propose that people with pre existing medical conditions be eliminated from the gene pool to reduce public expenditure, then I’m all ears.
“Of course if we follow your logic on cigs then we ought to subsidize harmful products in the hope that they kill people earlier and reduce SS and Medicare expense.”
Nah – I’m just pushing back against your claim that smokers are generating huge negative externalities when the opposite is more likely to be true. BTW – in case you missed it, subsidizing harmful products is a natural implication of your logic and not necessarily mine. Are you not going not to treat positive and negative externalities equally from a purely utilitarian perspective?