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Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#11

Post by snarf21 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #3

>If Middletown’s police department collected only about 1 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts it would solve 53 percent of its violent crimes and 32 percent of its property crimes. But if Middletown’s police department instead collected 3 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts that clearance rates would fall to 41 percent for violent crimes and 16 percent for propert…

I think this misses the point. Issues like this are multi-faceted. Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night.

My brother-in-law is a state police. When he was on patrol, they would get lots of calls because someone mowed across someone else's property line. Or someone stole someone else's pet rabbit. Once a mom called in and claimed that her teenage son was assaulting her. When they arrived, it turned out he just wasn't listening to her and doing chores and homework so she wanted to 'scare him straight' and have the police tell him he had to. Other ones are because some 15 year old texted nudes or posted on Instagram that they were going to 'kill' a teacher that gave them a bad grade.

He is now a detective and it is like you say above. The easy ones get solved right away after some minor investigation but there are no resources to spend weeks investigating murders with no witnesses or likely suspects.

In the end, part of it comes down to what do you want the police function to be.

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#13

Post by mc32 »

kgwxd wrote: post #6

It makes no sense that money police collects goes directly towards funding any government department. It should go into a tax refund pool.

Totally agree. All this should go into a central/state coffers and redustributed to policing based on need.

There are rural areas greatly underserved by law enforcement due to low pop densities, so there has to be something which accounts fir that.

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#16

Post by prepend »

I wasn’t able to find any controls for the possibility of high percent fee-funded police department having lower ability to invest in quality workforce and training.

I see the correlation, but not the causal link. Is high fee a symptom of lower effectiveness rather than high fees causing lower effectiveness? Or they have no causal link at all?

This seems pretty important, anybody else get this from the paper?

I’m interested in having this research concluded because my gut agrees with the sentiment that incentivizing police to collect fees will reduce impact on non-fee crimes. But my head won’t let me act without reliable evidence.

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#17

Post by [deleted] »

snarf21 wrote: post #11
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #3

>If Middletown’s police department collected only about 1 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts it would solve 53 percent of its violent crimes and 32 percent of its property crimes. But if Middletown’s police department instead collected 3 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts that clearance rates would fall to 41 percent for violent crimes and 16 percent for propert…

I think this misses the point. Issues like this are multi-faceted. Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night. My brother-in-law is a state police. When he was on patrol, they would get lots of calls because someone mowed across someone else's…

[deleted]

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#18

Post by antsar »

merpnderp wrote: post #7
kgwxd wrote: post #6

It makes no sense that money police collects goes directly towards funding any government department. It should go into a tax refund pool.

I was trying to think of a place to stick the money that wouldn't incentivize over-policing and couldn't think of one. But your option is perfect. There's obviously no incentive for government employees to return money to tax payers, so if anything, this would incentivize under-enforcement of fines and fees.

Aren't government employees also taxpayers? The incentive is much weaker, but still there.

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#19

Post by vkou »

snarf21 wrote: post #11
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #3

>If Middletown’s police department collected only about 1 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts it would solve 53 percent of its violent crimes and 32 percent of its property crimes. But if Middletown’s police department instead collected 3 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts that clearance rates would fall to 41 percent for violent crimes and 16 percent for propert…

I think this misses the point. Issues like this are multi-faceted. Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night. My brother-in-law is a state police. When he was on patrol, they would get lots of calls because someone mowed across someone else's…

> Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night.

Given that everyone[1] speeds, I think you're comparing half dozen of one to six of the other.

[1] Okay, something like 95% of the vehicles on the road, and everyone hates the other 5%.

Re: Police that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crime

#20

Post by jbob2000 »

kgwxd wrote: post #6

It makes no sense that money police collects goes directly towards funding any government department. It should go into a tax refund pool.

In Canada, you get a 20-25% surcharge on your fines called the "Victim Fine Surcharge". It goes directly into a fund that pays out to victims of crime.

Aside from that, the fines go to the jurisdiction that charged you, which can then be used for whatever the jurisdiction wants; road repairs, school improvements, landscaping, administration, etc. etc. So if you were charged with a provincial fine, the money would go to the province, if you were charged with a regional fine, the money would go to the region.

In a way, that's a "tax-refund" pool, isn't it? We don't need to spend as much tax money on these things because the fines partially fund them.

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