Good Cop Bonds: a proposal to incentivize cops to behave better.
It doesn't require police cooperation, or even city cooperation, initially.
It only requires the willingness of at least some people to:
a) pay to measure the amount of police brutality
b) pay if the police brutality declines.
(Though it will work better if police and cities can get behind it.)
It consists of the following five components:
1. The Good Cop Foundation (GCF), a 501c3 non-profit devoted to measuring and reducing police brutality.
2. The Police Brutality Survey (PBS). A regular, anonymous survey of properly sampled members of a community, similar to the National Victimization Survey.
The survey would measure different kinds of "police brutality incidents" (PBI's), such as Excessive Force, Sex Worker Rape, Warrantless Search, Racial Profiling, etc.
3. The Positive Police Performance Survey (PPPS). Similar to the PBS, this survey measures the things the cops are doing well, such as reduced accident rates, restitution rates, crime reduction, prisoner population reduction, etc.
4. The Police Performance Index (PPI), an index that combines both positive and negative surveys into a single overall measure of police performance, .
5. "Good Cop" bonds. These bonds pay out if the cops meet their performance targets as measured by the PPI.
The bonds could be funded from a variety of sources: private individuals, nonprofits, city governments, companies, etc.
For example, individual citizens might issue their own bonds that pay out if they personally do not suffer from any PBI's during the course of the year.
The local chapter of the NAACP might issue bonds that pay out if PBI's affecting the black community decline by at least 10% relative to the previous year.
The city of San Francisco might issue bonds to the SFPD officers themselves, as part of their pay package.
If the police force overall meets their PPI target, then the bonds payout to the police.
If the police fail to meet their target, the bonds pay into the SF Victim's Restitution Fund. The restitution fund would pay for things like rape counseling, housing/food assistance, medical bills, attorney fees, and so on.
The bonds could be issued with different time frames, of 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.
Disadvantages:
* Complex to explain.
* Stats could be juked.
* Cops 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.
Advantages:
* 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.
#policereform
#cops
#police
#copbonds
It doesn't require police cooperation, or even city cooperation, initially.
It only requires the willingness of at least some people to:
a) pay to measure the amount of police brutality
b) pay if the police brutality declines.
(Though it will work better if police and cities can get behind it.)
It consists of the following five components:
1. The Good Cop Foundation (GCF), a 501c3 non-profit devoted to measuring and reducing police brutality.
2. The Police Brutality Survey (PBS). A regular, anonymous survey of properly sampled members of a community, similar to the National Victimization Survey.
The survey would measure different kinds of "police brutality incidents" (PBI's), such as Excessive Force, Sex Worker Rape, Warrantless Search, Racial Profiling, etc.
3. The Positive Police Performance Survey (PPPS). Similar to the PBS, this survey measures the things the cops are doing well, such as reduced accident rates, restitution rates, crime reduction, prisoner population reduction, etc.
4. The Police Performance Index (PPI), an index that combines both positive and negative surveys into a single overall measure of police performance, .
5. "Good Cop" bonds. These bonds pay out if the cops meet their performance targets as measured by the PPI.
The bonds could be funded from a variety of sources: private individuals, nonprofits, city governments, companies, etc.
For example, individual citizens might issue their own bonds that pay out if they personally do not suffer from any PBI's during the course of the year.
The local chapter of the NAACP might issue bonds that pay out if PBI's affecting the black community decline by at least 10% relative to the previous year.
The city of San Francisco might issue bonds to the SFPD officers themselves, as part of their pay package.
If the police force overall meets their PPI target, then the bonds payout to the police.
If the police fail to meet their target, the bonds pay into the SF Victim's Restitution Fund. The restitution fund would pay for things like rape counseling, housing/food assistance, medical bills, attorney fees, and so on.
The bonds could be issued with different time frames, of 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.
Disadvantages:
* Complex to explain.
* Stats could be juked.
* Cops 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.
Advantages:
* 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.
#policereform
#cops
#police
#copbonds