How do you stop police and other law enforcement officials from abusing their power?
It's a hard problem. On the one hand, cops must necessarily be able to use force to stop and apprehend criminals.
On the other hand, cops sometimes abuse their power. See the work of Radley Balko and Billy Binion for numerous examples of police malfeasance.
And once a police force becomes corrupt, it's very difficult to root out the corruption. Corrupt officers are incentivized to punish or drive out the good cops and prevent any new ones from entering the force. Reporters and whistle-blowers must risk persecution at the hands of the police if they publicize police wrongdoing. Politicians who try to root out corruption face similar persecution, plus the loss of campaign funds, voters, and police endorsements.
The Good Cop Bond System : incenting bad cops to do good
"Good Cop" Bonds (GCB's) are intended to work around these problems. The GCB system consists of the following three components: the "Good Cop Foundation", the Police Brutality Survey, and the "Good Cop Bond" market.
The Good Cop Foundation (GCF) is a 501c3 non-profit devoted to measuring and reducing police brutality.
As part of its mission, the GCF would administer the Police Brutality Survey (PBS), a regular, anonymous survey of randomly sampled members of a community, similar to the National Crime Victimization Survey.
Every quarter, the PBS would measure "police brutality incidents" (PBI's), such as Excessive Force, Prisoner Rape, Extortion, Asset Forfeiture, Warrant-less Search, Racial Profiling, Planting Evidence, Speed Traps, Lying Under Oath, Extortion, Bribery, etc. The PBS would also measure community improvements, such as reduced accident rates / crime / prisoner population, etc. The survey data would be then used to create the Police Performance Index (PPI), which combines the data into a single overall measure of police performance.
The GCF would also raise money for "Good Cop" bonds (GCB's). GCB's are tradable performance bonds that pay out to the owners if the cops meet their performance targets, as measured by the PPI. They're a variant of social policy bonds invented by economist Ronnie Horesh.
"Good Cop" bonds could be funded from a variety of sources: private individuals, nonprofits, city governments, companies, etc.
Though the system will work better if government officials endorse the program, the system doesn't require government buy-in to work. GCB's only require the willingness of at least some people to:
pay to measure police malfeasance
pay if the police malfeasance declines
For example, let's suppose that you're a black person, and you believe the police are harassing black people in your city unjustifiably. You could issue bonds that pay out the owner $100 each if the the number of PBI's in your city declines by 50% from year to year. Buyers of the GCB's would be incented to reduce police harassment. Maybe the best way to reduce police harassment would be to give some of them to the police commissioner. He would then be incented to crack down on bad behavior and/or fire bad cops.
The City of San Francisco might issue bonds to the SFPD officers themselves, as part of their pay package. At the beginning of the year, the city could give the police force bonds that will pay out if they meet their PPI target But if the police fail to meet their target, the bonds would pay into the SF Whistle-blower's Protection Fund. The restitution fund would pay for things like rape counseling, housing/food assistance, medical bills, attorney fees, and so on for people who whistle-blow against corrupt cops/officials.
The bonds could be issued with different time frames, from short term to long term. Say 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, etc. They might also be set up to payout based on rolling measures to smooth out random spikes. For example, a bond might be set up to pay out based on the rolling average of the last three years of survey data, instead of the just the past year.
What are the challenges of implementing the GCB system?
The
. Once a significant portion of cop pay is based on Police Brutality Survey stats, they'll be incentivized to corrupt the stats collection process. This should be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the bonds pay out based on independent survey data (rather the statistics collected by the police). If necessary, the stats could be collected by firms well outside the cop's jurisdiction, such that it would be difficult for the cops/officials to threaten the surveyors to force them to juke the states.
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Complex to explain.
Cops / cop unions will likely vigorously oppose any attempts to tie their pay to performance.
Some communities have different racial, economic, and cultural profiles (and therefore difficulty of policing). Palo Alto is probably much easier to police than Oakland, for example. It's not fair to penalize the cops that face much more difficult policing challenges.
Therefore, I would suggest that each city start with its own baseline based on a few years worth of surveys prior to issuing the bonds.
Thus, police performance would be measured against where they were starting from, rather than unrealistic comparisons to communities with very different challenges.
What are the expected benefits?
Police would have an incentive to behave better since they're paid more if they behave well.
Since the bonds pay out based on the performance of the cops overall, the good cops have an incentive to stop the bad cops before they can cause damage.
Cop union contracts could be written in such a way that the bulk of their pay is tied to good PPI numbers.
Good PPI numbers would likely become a selling point for city government and civil leaders to attract businesses / jobs to the city.
How can the GCB system be implemented?
With the growth of anonymous, decentralized DAO / smart contract systems such as Darkfi, users will be able to create and operate such markets in a decentralized, censorship resistant fashion. The Darkfi system is still at an early stage, so it's probably best not to rely on its anonymity protections too heavily just yet. But once it's been vetted a bit more fully, it should be posible to issue, trade, and pay out GCB's with little risk of government persecution.
If you'd like to help make GCB marketplaces happen faster:
Share this newsletter with folks you think are likely to be supportive. I will be sending out updates as the DarkFi system evolves.
Follow @darkfisquad on Twitter.
Help test / document the Darkfi DAO/smart contract system.
If technically inclined, help write the smart contacts for GCB's.
Start a Good Cop Foundation in your area.
When they become available, donate to GCB's in your area.
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