Romer’s prescription is not merely neo-medieval, in other words. It is also neo-colonial.
That’s from a great article in the Atlantic about Paul Romer and charter cities. H/T Greg Young.
Ducks and Economics
A blog by Eapen Thampy
Category Archives: law
On the Columbia Police Department and the “silent majority”
Brennan David reports about the Columbia police department’s new customer surveys in today’s Columbia Tribune:
“I think the chief recognizes that most of the department supplies excellent customer service,” said police spokeswoman Officer Jessie Haden. “If someone has a bad experience, they are vocal about that. The people that are happy with service can be the silent majority. This is another way to get feedback.”
The charitable interpretation here is that the police department is delusional about precisely how to measure customer satisfaction and fail to recognize that citizen interactions with police often happen in the context of overwhelming displays of force. It is not disputed over the last several years there have been numerous incidents of police brutality and misconduct in Columbia that have only been publicized through a serious of fortuitous accidents and the emergence of modern video recording technology that can be deployed through cellphones. Often members of poor and politically weak groups, particularly black people, are the victims of police brutality and misconduct, and find their complaints stymied by police bureaucracy and the tendency of law enforcement to protect its own.
When citizens are the victims of substantial and forceful rights violations they are left with the belief that the system does not exist to protect them and that they are best served by dropping out and not participating. It is hard to convince people that after their doors have been kicked in by SWAT teams dressed in paramilitary gear for non-violent misdemeanor offenses that their complaints of rights violations will be met by a receptive officer at the desk or even by the Internal Affairs department. Moreover there is evidence that rights violations are systemic and underreported by the Columbia Police department. Check out this particularly egregious case where the Columbia police department is on video outright lying to an attorney waiting in their lobby to speak to his client; officers told his client, who was in the holding cell, that her attorney had gone home, and told the attorney that his client had not asked to see him yet.
So no. Officer Haden is wrong in saying that there is a “silent majority” that is happy with their “customer service”. People are silent because they have been silenced and fear reprisal, not because they are happy with their law enforcement.
Welcome to Soviet America.
Addendum: here is the link to the CPD’s customer survey, which can be presumably filled anonymously.
How the state of Missouri could save money in a tough budgetary climate
The view from Schmitt,Warner, and Gupta (2010):
The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.
These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.
Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice William Price puts this into perspective for Missouri in a Feb. 3rd, 2010 speech:
Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders. It is costing us billions of dollars and it is not making a dent in crime.
Listen to these numbers. In 1994, shortly after I came to the Court, the number of nonviolent offenders in Missouri prisons was 7,461. Today it’s 14,204. That’s almost double. In 1994, the number of new commitments for nonviolent offenses was 4,857. Last year, it was 7,220 — again, almost double. At a rate of $16,432 per offender, we currently are spending $233.4 million a year to incarcerate nonviolent offenders … not counting the investment in the 10 prisons it takes to hold these individuals at $100 million per prison. In 1994, appropriations to the Department of Corrections totaled $216,753,472. Today, it’s $670,079,452. The amount has tripled. And the recidivism rate for these individuals, who are returned to prison within just two years, is 41.6 percent.
Here is a graph, again from CEPR:
Economic development, markets, and a Missouri governor I’ll identify as “Jay Nixon”
Thomas Duda at the Show-Me Daily writes:
While reading the Springfield Business Journal, I ran across a mention of the governor’s recently formed Executive Advisory Board, which will produce “a five-year plan for economic growth.” The governor’s press release states:
The final outcome of the planning process will be six to 10 strategic objectives to transform Missouri’s economy for the 21st century. The objectives will pinpoint existing and future industries that will drive growth. Along with each strategic objective, the plan will include specific tactical steps necessary to accomplish the goal. The strategic objectives and tactics will focus on the next five years.
Although I find the Executive Advisory Board’s mandate ludicrous — that state government should chart and shape the course of something as complex as our collective future economic development, I do find it encouraging that a committee member quoted in the Springfield Business Journal stated:
“We spend lots of money on economic development every year. The question is, ‘Are we strategically aligned to do it in the most effective way?’”
Obviously, the panel will not consider the possibility that the state of Missouri leave the business of economic development entirely, but I am somewhat hopeful that Executive Advisory Board just might conclude that the termination of some market-distorting policies would set Missouri on a course toward a freer and more prosperous future.
Say there are several companies in cutting edge industry X that are trying to make location decisions. The key criteria for a potential location is whether or not the legal architecture for that business to operate exists or not. Do you think it is appropriate for a governmental commission to try to predict what kind of legal architecture is necessary to sustain economic growth? Consider the much debated but unarguably important scholarship of Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny (LLSV 1998) whose data-driven approach to analyzing the relationship between legal development and economic growth has been influential in persuading governments to support markets, not replace them (LLS 2008).
Consider, too, that this is not just a commission that can be characterized in a strict government/free market dichotomy. The press release notes that the commission will be directed by top business leaders; this is more appropriately characterized as a place where the public and private spheres interact to increase the efficiency of both. I point you to Vincent Ostrom, who notes in an interview with Vernon Smith:
Instead, we should expect to find some combination of market and non-market structures in every society, and we should recognize the complex configuration of institutions behind labels such as “capitalism”. We might usefully think about combinations of private and public economies existing side by side. However, it’s important to stress that not all forms of public enterprise are, or need to be, state-owned and operated. Markets are diverse and complex entities. Markets for different types of goods and services may take on quite different characteristics. Some may work well under the most impersonal conditions. Others may depend upon personal considerations involving high levels of trust among trading partners. In other words, the options are much greater than we imagine, and we can see this is true if we don’t allow our minds to be trapped within narrowly constrained intellectual horizons.
I hazard a guess that Duda does not account for these parameters. Consider Maryland, for instance. The economic development commission there (if there is one) there could make the determination that laws barring video recording of law enforcement provides a poor legal architecture for the existence of citizen journalism or documentary filmmakers, among others. Relaxing these laws would stimulate economic activities by people and firms who previously were priced out of the market by liability costs.
Or alternatively, an economic development commission could find that biotech companies would be happy to relocate to Missouri if they could rely on a legal architecture that protects them from unfair claims of tort. Without that architecture, biotech companies wouldn’t be willing to relocate to Missouri, and we’d lose what might otherwise be an very productive industry to another place.
I don’t want to extend this argument to subsidizing businesses to relocate through tax incentives and other kinds of public financing. But I do think that the notion that Governor Nixon is interested in promoting sensible economic development through the work and advice of private-sector leaders commendable, and I think that there are good arguments as to why.
More forfeiture advocacy–Columbia City Council, June 7th, 2010
I spoke to the Columbia City Council last night, delving into specifics on how forfeiture money is retained by local and federal law enforcement in circumvention of of the Missouri constitution (Article IX, Section 7) and Missouri statutory law (RsMO 166-131, RsMO 166-300). Here is a link to the video; I speak at 2:27:30.
Here is the white paper I sent to the Columbia City Council last month in Microsoft Word format (*.doc). The topic is forfeiture money and how allowing law enforcement to retain the proceeds of forfeiture skews their incentive structures and disconnects law enforcement policy from voter and legislative preferences.
Addendum: here is the link to the 1990 Missouri Supreme Court opinion I cite (Reorganized School Dist. No 7 v. Douthit).
The history of blind auditions
From Nat Hentoff’s (really) excellent At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene. This selection is from chapter 47, “The Thoreau of Jazz”:
Art Davis, who died of aheart attack at seventy-three on July 29, 3007, was, for me, the Henry David Thoreau of jazz. I’ve known many people in the jazz family with admirable integrity, but Art Davis’s was fiercely unbreakable, whatever the cost.
…
Art Davis was a complete musician, as authoritative in a symphonic orchestra, a Broadway pit band, network studio assignment or accompanying, as he did, Judy Garland or country music comedienne Minne Pearl.
He also became a pariah in parts of the music business for years because he insisted on breaking the color line in symphony orchestras. As I had reported in the The Reporter magazine in the late 1950s, it was not only that Jim Crow managed much of that hiring. Also, as positions opened in an orchestra, the first-chair players (all of them white) would get management to hire their best students (also white) for those chairs.
For years, Art, having been turned down by leading symphony orchestras, challenged the conductors to pit him against any classical bassist they chose in an open competition. There were no takers. In the 1970s, he sued the New York State Philharmonic for racial discrimination, and as the years went on, until the case was dismissed, Art lost a lot of the previously highly diversified work for which he had been sought. Obviously, the man was a “troublemaker”.
But because of the lawsuit, the attendant publicity and Art’s continuing challenge to put any symphonic bass part–however deeply traditional or unprecedently avant-garde–before him in competition for a gig in any world-famous orchestra, he became the major force that created “blind auditions”. It became the practice, when there was an opening for any instrument, to audition the player behind a screen so that those judging his or her abilities–Art also protested gender discrimination–could hear the music but not see the musician. He lost the lawsuit, but won the battle.
Here is William Osborne with more on blind auditions and gender.
Racism, juries, and justice denied
From the Equal Justice Initiative:
The staff of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has looked closely at jury selection procedures in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. We uncovered shocking evidence of racial discrimination in jury selection in every state. We identified counties where prosecutors have excluded nearly 80% of African Americans qualified for jury service. We discovered majority-black counties where capital defendants nonetheless were tried by all-white juries. We found evidence that some prosecutors employed by state and local governments actually have been trained to exclude people on the basis of race and instructed on how to conceal their racial bias. In many cases, people of color not only have been illegally excluded but also denigrated and insulted with pretextual reasons intended to conceal racial bias. African Americans have been excluded because they appeared to have “low intelligence”; wore eyeglasses; were single, married, or separated; or were too old for jury service at age 43 or too young at 28. They have been barred for having relatives who attended historically black colleges; for the way they walk; for chewing gum; and, frequently, for living in predominantly black neighborhoods. These “race-neutral” explanations and the tolerance of racial bias by court officials has made jury selection for people of color a hazardous venture, where the sting of exclusion often is accompanied by painful insults and injurious commentary.
This is worthwhile scholarship. Why hasn’t this happened before?
You can’t make this up: Missouri police officer caught in drug sting, was “replacing evidence”
From the Lincoln County Journal (Lincoln County is 60 miles northwest of St. Louis):
The fallout following the arrest of a Winfield Police officer on a drug charge continues with the suspension of a police chief and investigation into cases involving the officer.
On May 21, 2010, investigators with the Lincoln County Narcotics Enforcement Team took a Winfield police officer into custody for attempting to purchase two grams of powder cocaine.
Net Team Investigators learned that officer, Bud Chrum and his brother, Tony Chrum, were attempting to purchase the cocaine in Troy city limits. According to the information they received, the cocaine was being purchased to replace some cocaine Bud Chrum had apparently removed from police evidence. According to the person providing the information, Tony Chrum would be the one to actually make the purchase.
the story continues:
Tony Chrum made arrangements with his brother over the telephone for them to meet at a Troy area apartment complex under the close supervision of the narcotics investigators. When Bud Chrum arrived at the pre-determined location to accept the cocaine from his brother, the narcotics investigators quickly moved in. Bud Chrum, who was in his police officer uniform at the time, immediately recognized one of the investigators and told him that he was only purchasing the cocaine to replace evidence he accidentally destroyed. He was taken into custody without incident.
Don’t they have SWAT teams for this kind of thing?
Senator Lindsey Graham on torture
From a Wednesday, May 13, 2009 hearing in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts:
I have been on the Armed Services Committee where we did a very thorough investigation of these interrogation techniques and how they came about. The Levin report is a good one. It is there to be read. I will take a back seat to no one about my love for the law and the desire for my Nation to be a noble Nation. The moral high ground in this war is the high ground. It is not a location. The enemy we are fighting, Mr. Chairman, does not have a capital to conquer or a Navy to sing or an Air Force to shoot down. It is an ideological struggle, and the decisions made in the past have had two sides. We did get some good information that made us safer, but we also hurt ourselves. We damaged our reputation, and we did some things that I think were not going to make us safer in the long run if we kept doing them.
Sandra Day O’Connor on merit selection of judges
Her op-ed in the NYT is here. I think it is worth reading:
In our system, the judiciary, unlike the legislative and the executive branches, is supposed to answer only to the law and the Constitution. Courts are supposed to be the one safe place where every citizen can receive a fair hearing.
In a merit selection system, a nonpartisan nominating commission interviews and investigates applicants for judicial vacancies, and ultimately recommends a few candidates to the governor. The governor appoints one from the list. Regular “retention” elections are held to allow voters to decide whether to keep the judge in office.
There are those who assert that this system benefits legal insiders, because lawyers will inevitably dominate the nominating commissions, which would hold their meetings in secret. But to the extent that this could be a real problem, Arizona has already demonstrated how to avoid it. In that state, nominating commissions are dominated by non-lawyers, and their meetings are open. Candidates’ applications are available online, and the public is invited to comment.
Another argument against this system is that it deprives voters of the chance to choose their judges. But the truth is, in those states that elect judges, candidates often run unopposed, so voters are left with no options, and little information about the people who are on the ballot. In a system where judges are evaluated before they are put on the ballot, voters can make their decisions more knowledgeably — with relevant information about the judges’ performance on the bench.
Thoughts on Rand Paul, racism, and naive libertarianism
I think Rand Paul is absolutely right when he defends the ability of people to engage in private, consensual relations, even if the content of those relations is offensive and wrong, like racism. He is however absolutely incorrect by extending this analysis to businesses like Whitworth’s, and here’s why.
I tend to think of laws against racist business practices in the same way I think of building codes, or food safety regulations. This is because a business implicates more than just the business owner and a customer; the community that the business exists in provides legal sanction for that business’s operation, and with that legal sanction is attached the variable requirements for building safety and good conduct that individual communities deem important and necessary for the operation of business. Regulations preventing racist business practices are no different from the health code or zoning laws in some important ways: they have a branding function that implicates both the business and the community the business is situated in, and they create dangerous environments that require intervention by law enforcement. It is not unreasonable that a government seeks to actively curate a city’s image (to enforce voter-expressed preferences) and regulates the business climate with that in mind, nor is it unreasonable that government should seek to prevent the public disorder that inevitably follows racist practices. I would add that regulations should also be content-neutral as a matter of fairness, but stipulation doesn’t meaningfully change my argument.
I could say alternatively that racism by businesses has serious negative externalities in practice and I’m ok with government regulation on those grounds.
So I think that Rand Paul, as much as I like his robust defense of civil liberties, is guilty of being delusionally naive about these questions.
Here is a couple of other worthwhile reads from Volokh Conspirators Ilya Somin and David Bernstein on the subject.
On reasserting civilian control of law enforcement
I spoke yesterday to the Columbia City Council presenting my white paper on how to reassert civilian control over law enforcement in Columbia, Missouri. I was part of a group of people who might be variously labeled as libertarians who were at the council meeting to speak out against the policies implicated in the February SWAT raid of a suspected cannabis dealer that resulted in two small dogs being shot in front of a seven-year-old child, with nothing meaningful to show for the subsequent search or arrest.
Video of the city council meeting is here. I speak at 2:52.40. Mitch Richards, a libertarian member of Keep Columbia Safe, addresses some of the same issues that I do at 2:27.35 and I recommend listening to his speech as well.
Addendum: Greg Young comments on my white paper and posts it in full here. Coverage from the Columbia Missourian is here. Coverage from the Columbia Tribune is here.
I’m going to be on the radio tomorrow!
At 5pm tomorrow, I’ll be on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Missouri with with hosts Steve Spellman and Mitch Richards, who will be interviewing me about a white paper I wrote on the topic of of re-asserting civilian control of domestic law enforcement. I will be talking very specifically about civil asset forfeiture laws and the constitutional issues involved. Radley Balko from Reason Magazine might also be joining us for the discussion. You can listen live on your Iphone using the Public Radio Player app.
This is the greatest thing I have seen in weeks
The name of the group appears to be the UMKC Law School Revue $1.98. The name of this song is “Disbursement Checks”. H/T: Sam Burnett
Is the US military spying on Americans?
This is scary. From the ABA Journal:
A 22-year-old activist from the Evergreen State College in Washington will get $169,000 and his lawyers are expected to get twice as much in settlement of a political spying case that reportedly may have been sparked by a tip-off from the U.S. military that local authorities should keep an eye on Philip Chinn.
Arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in May 2007 while he was en route to an anti-war protest over the use of civilian ports for military purposes, Chinn won the dismissal of the case after tests showed he had no drugs or alcohol in his system, reports the Seattle Times. He subsequently sued for false arrest and violation of his constitutional rights.
The state patrol is funding $109,000 of the settlement to Chinn and local government agencies are picking up the rest of the tab. They have also agreed to pay his legal fees, which the American Civil Liberties Union estimates at $375,000, an ACLU spokesman says.
The ACLU pursued Chinn’s case because it believes the facts suggest U.S. military involvement in spying on activists by local law enforcement, both concerning Chinn and others, is “far more pervasive than we had thought,” spokesman Doug Honig tells the newspaper.
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