After the financial class burned down the economy again, local governments once more faced a reduction in their revenues. As the economy recovered under a Democrat President, the Republicans held or gained power in many state governments, such as my own adopted state of Florida. With laudable consistency with their professed ideology, Republicans cut taxes for businesses, the well off and sometimes almost everyone. While the professed theory is cutting taxes increases revenue for state and local governments, shockingly enough the opposite happens: state and local governments run short of funds needed to meet the expenses of operating a civilization.
Being resourceful, local leaders then seek other revenue streams to pay the bills. While cities like Ferguson provided well-known examples of a common “solution”, many have embraced the idea of law-enforcement as revenue stream. While the general practice of getting revenue from law enforcement is nothing new, the extent to which some local governments rely on it shocking. How the system works is also often shocking as it can be a shakedown system one would expect to see in a corrupt country unfamiliar with the rule of law or the rights of citizens.
Since Ferguson, where Michael Brown was shot on August 9, 2014, has been the subject of extensive study, I will use the statistics from that town. Unfortunately, Ferguson does not appear to be unique or even unusual.
In 2013, Ferguson’s court dealt with 12,108 cases and 24,532 warrants. This works out to an average of 1.5 cases and 3 warrants per household in Ferguson. The fines and court fees that year totaled $2,635,400, making the municipal court the second largest revenue stream.
One concern that was addressed by the media was that the legal system disproportionally target blacks. In Ferguson, as in many places, most of the cases handled by the court are from traffic stops. Ferguson is 29% white, but whites make up only 12.7% of those stopped. When a person is stopped, a black citizen will be searched 12.1% of the time, while a white citizen will be searched 6.9% of the time. In terms of arrest, a black citizen was arrested 10.4% of the time and a white citizen was arrested 5.2% of the time.
The usual reply to such disparities is to claim that blacks commit more crimes than whites. If it were true that black Americans were being arrested in proportion to the rate at which they were committing crimes, then this would be (on the face of it) fair. However, this is not the case. Even though blacks were more likely to be searched than whites, police discovered contraband only 21.7% of the time. Whites who were searched were found with contraband 34.0% of the time. Also, 93% of those arrested in Ferguson were black. While not logically impossible, it would be odd that 93% of the crime in the city was committed by black citizens.
Naturally, these numbers can be talked around or explained away. It could be argued that blacks are not being targeted as a specific source of revenue, and the arrest rates are proportional and just. This still leaves the matter of how the legal system operates in terms of being focused on revenue.
Laying aside race, Ferguson stands out as an example of how law enforcement can turn into a collection system. One key component is, of course, having costly fines. For example, Ferguson had a $531 fine for high grass and weeds, $792 for Failure to Obey, $527 for Failure to Comply, $427 for a Peace Disturbance violation, and so on.
If a person can pay, then the person is not arrested. But, if a person cannot afford the fine, then an arrest warrant is issued, and this is the second part of the system. The city issued 32,975 arrest warrants for minor offenses in 2013 and the city had a population of 21,000 people at that time.
After a person is arrested, they face even more fees, such as court fees and these can quickly pile up. For example, a person might get a $150 parking ticket they cannot pay. They are then arrested and subject to more fees and more charges. This initial ticket might grow to a debt of almost$1,000 to the city. Given that the people who tend to be targeted are poor, it is likely they will not be able to pay for the initial ticket. They will then be arrested, which could cost them their job, thus making them unable to pay their court fees. This could easily spiral into a court-inflicted cycle of poverty and debt. This, obviously enough, is not what the legal system is supposed to do. Unless, of course, it is.
From a moral standpoint, one problem with using law enforcement as a revenue stream is the damage it does to the citizens who cannot afford the fines and fees. As noted in the example above, a person’s life could be ruined by a single parking ticket. The point of law enforcement in a just society is to protect the citizens from harm, not inflict ruin.
A second moral concern is that this system seems to be racketeering. It makes a threat of arrest and court fees, and then offers “protection” from that threat in return for a fee. That is, citizens are threatened so they will buy their way out of greater harm. This is hardly justice. If it was practiced by anyone other than the government (or a corporation), it would be criminal racketeering and a protection scheme.
A third moral concern is exploiting the citizens by force and threat of force damages the fundamental relation between the citizen and the democratic state. In feudal states and in the domains of warlords, one expects the thugs of the warlords to shake down the peasants. However, that sort of thing is contrary to the nature of a democratic state. As happened during the revolts against feudalism and warlords, people will sometimes revolt against such oppression, and this is to be expected. Robin Hood is, after all, the hero and the Sheriff of Nottingham is the villain. But some folks in law enforcement take Darth Vader to be the hero, so…
This is not to say that there should never be fines, penalties and punishments. However, they should be proportional to the offenses, they should be fairly applied, and should be aimed at protecting the citizens, not filling the coffers of the kingdom. As a final point, we should not be cutting the taxes of the rich and shift costs to the poor. That is unjust and will result in dire social consequences. But the obvious problem is that these systems are working as intended.