Policing And Judging For Profit !!!

It’s stun­ning when you think about the fact that our tax dol­lars are tak­en from us whether we like it or not. New and inge­nious ways are found to tax us into pover­ty, yet no mat­ter how much they take from us under the guise of tax­a­tion, they use the mon­ey they take from us to hire more of these pirates and extor­tion­ists to take more. 
They get away with it because of igno­rance and brain­wash­ing; far too many peo­ple believe the lie that they are hir­ing more police for their pro­tec­tion. Ironically, the more cops they hire, the more crime we have.(mb)

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When city gov­ern­ments spend more mon­ey than they take in, offi­cials often search for ways to gen­er­ate rev­enue. One increas­ing­ly com­mon source of mon­ey is traf­fic tick­ets. And research shows police offi­cers issue more traf­fic tick­ets when cities are finan­cial­ly in a deficit.
But police rep­re­sent only one aspect of this rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing sys­tem. Judges and their courts also use traf­fic cita­tions to gen­er­ate mon­ey for the cities that employ them. As schol­ars of pub­lic finance, we study how cities raise mon­ey to pay for their oper­a­tions. Our new research indi­cates that judges in cities fac­ing red ink often use their posi­tions to max­i­mize rev­enue from traf­fic tick­ets. They can do this by adding finan­cial penal­ties to unpaid tick­ets. Judges often use the extra penal­ties to encour­age peo­ple to pay. The process of gen­er­at­ing dol­lars through traf­fic tick­ets, though, begins with the police.

Revenue-motivated policing

Traffic vio­la­tions are com­mon. Whether dri­vers fail to sig­nal a turn or dri­ve a few miles per hour above the speed lim­it, it is not dif­fi­cult for police to find some­one who vio­lat­ed a traf­fic law. Officers have the dis­cre­tion to pick and choose when to tick­et and can adjust the num­ber of tick­ets they issue based on fac­tors that are not relat­ed to whether some­one broke the law. Those fac­tors include the race of the dri­ver or the racial make­up of the neigh­bor­hood the offi­cers are patrolling. Usually, this means African American dri­vers and dri­vers in neigh­bor­hoods with more African American res­i­dents are tick­et­ed at high­er rates than oth­er peo­ple. Another fac­tor affect­ing tick­et­ing, but unre­lat­ed to whether dri­vers are break­ing traf­fic laws, is the bud­getary sit­u­a­tion of the city. One high-pro­file exam­ple of how a city’s use of traf­fic tick­ets can be a prob­lem is Ferguson, Missouri. According to a 2015 Department of Justice report, “Ferguson’s law enforce­ment prac­tices are shaped by the city’s focus on rev­enue rather than by pub­lic safe­ty needs.” And those prac­tices affect­ed African Americans dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly. According to that report, African Americans made up 67% of the city’s pop­u­la­tion at the time, but they were the sub­jects of 85% of traf­fic stops, 90% of the tick­ets, 92% of the war­rants police issued and 96% of the arrests. Ferguson was nei­ther the first nor the only local gov­ern­ment to replen­ish its cof­fers through traf­fic tick­ets. In the years since that fed­er­al report, numer­ous stud­ies have shown that police and oth­er city per­son­nel increase the vol­ume of traf­fic tick­ets they issue based on bud­getary need.

The prac­tice is actu­al­ly so com­mon that it has sev­er­al names: “polic­ing for prof­it” and “rev­enue-moti­vat­ed polic­ing” among them. After a police offi­cer tick­ets a dri­ver, the process moves to a court.

Ticketing incentives in court

In some cas­es, the court that will process traf­fic tick­ets is oper­at­ed by the state; in oth­ers, it is oper­at­ed by the munic­i­pal­i­ty. Regardless, the court is respon­si­ble for col­lect­ing mon­ey from traf­fic tick­ets. But which court hears the case mat­ters quite a bit. If a traf­fic tick­et is set­tled in a state court, the mon­ey from fees is divid­ed across the state and its var­i­ous local gov­ern­ments. But if that same tick­et is set­tled in a munic­i­pal court, then the vast major­i­ty of the mon­ey goes to the city. Our research exam­ined how this dif­fer­ence affect­ed traf­fic tick­ets in Indiana. Like pri­or research, we found that police from cities fac­ing rev­enue short­ages issued more tick­ets. But we showed that this only hap­pened when cities ran their own munic­i­pal courts. Put anoth­er way, the police are only more like­ly to tick­et when it is prof­itable for the cities they serve. We also exam­ined how judges use their pow­er to col­lect more mon­ey. Ferguson once again pro­vides an exam­ple of how author­i­ties can abuse this pow­er. As detailed in the Justice Department report, judges did not con­sid­er a person’s finan­cial sta­tus when levy­ing penal­ties or set­ting pay­ment dead­lines. They also aggres­sive­ly applied option­al fees for late pay­ments. Lastly, judges and police offi­cers pro­vid­ed incor­rect or incom­plete infor­ma­tion about when or whether defen­dants were required to appear in court. That meant defen­dants often racked up addi­tion­al fees – and some­times arrest war­rants – for fail­ure to appear. Our research explored whether the prob­lems in Ferguson hap­pened else­where. We stud­ied Indiana, where judges can sus­pend defen­dants’ driver’s licens­es if they have not paid their fines. This is a pow­er­ful, but poten­tial­ly harm­ful, way to coerce pay­ment. We count­ed the num­ber of days judges wait­ed before sus­pend­ing a driver’s license. Then, we looked at whether the city was expe­ri­enc­ing a rev­enue short­fall. We found that judges sus­pend licens­es faster when their cities need more mon­ey. The effect was pret­ty large: A 1% decrease in rev­enue caused licens­es to be sus­pend­ed three days faster. Indiana’s prop­er­ty tax sys­tem places lim­its on the amount of rev­enue cities can col­lect through prop­er­ty tax­es, and cities do not dis­cov­er how much of their prop­er­ty tax levy they will be able to col­lect until after the city bud­get process is com­plete. This sys­tem allowed us to com­pare cities fac­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of rev­enue short­falls due to state-imposed reduc­tions in prop­er­ty tax revenues.

The bottom line

In some cities and states, offi­cials oper­ate their courts – not just the police depart­ment – to gen­er­ate rev­enue. We believe this is inher­ent­ly a prob­lem. The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem should exist to max­i­mize pub­lic safe­ty, not rev­enue. But if states change the rules about who keeps the mon­ey gen­er­at­ed by traf­fic tick­ets and relat­ed fines, the incen­tives for rev­enue max­i­miza­tion go away. Our research bears this out. Judges will have no rea­son to sus­pend licens­es faster when their cities are fac­ing a bud­get crunch if the rev­enue goes to the state. This change won’t fix every­thing. Racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will still be per­va­sive. But it could help get rid of polic­ing — and judg­ing — for profit.

This arti­cle is repub­lished from The Conversation, an inde­pen­dent non­prof­it news site ded­i­cat­ed to shar­ing ideas from aca­d­e­m­ic experts. The Conversation has a vari­ety of fas­ci­nat­ing free newslet­ters.

It was writ­ten by: Sian Mughan, Arizona State University and Akheil Singla, Arizona State University.