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The Public Prods the Policeman to Perversity

Mar 20, 2008
By .
Politics & Current Events

Megan McArdle has an interesting take on this Washington Post article discussing the difficulties regular, non-terrorist Americans have in getting their names removed from government watchlists. Both McArdle's post and the Post article are well worth reading, particularly if you're troubled that the government shares its terror suspect lists with … credit reporting agencies.

I'd like to expand on McArdle's point (that too much terror protection can be a bad thing) by observing that the problems of incentivization she addresses don't apply just to the war on terror. It's certainly true that the terrorcrat faces the potential of massive penalties (his job, a guilty conscience, and eternal humiliation) in the event that the wrong terrorist isn't caught. He also faces the certainty of minor penalties in the event superiors, budgeters, or the public perceive him to be underzealous. ("Why aren't you doing your job?") Whereas when an innocent appears on a government watchlist, the terrorcrat who doesn't help him faces merely … a guilty conscience. While most public servants are good people with a conscience, a conscience isn't enough.

The problem of a "stacked deck" that McArdle complains of, though, applies to all policemen through all time. I'm not aware of any government, ever, where the incentives and disincentives for law enforcement have encouraged giving the potentially innocent the benefit of the doubt, or for that matter promptly assisting ordinary people whose names wind up on the wrong lists. At worst, we have the Soviet Union, where the police gave themselves quotas to arrest lest someone think they weren't busy enough and needed to be purged, but even the most liberal societies, like Los Angeles, are rife with tales of abuse.

It's something to think about the next time any politician assures you he plans to do more to protect you against … whatever.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

4 Comments
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4 Comments

  1. Ken  •  Mar 20, 2008 @1:54 pm

    You can find the watch list in question here. Some of the names seem sufficiently distinct that they don't pose a huge risk of over-enforcement. It's the a.k.a.s that will kill you. "John Hernandez" indeed. This is complicated by the fact that the American government does not understand, and will probably never understand, Latino naming conventions. Hence every Latino client I ever had showed a rap sheet with multiple "aliases", based on the government's belief that double surnames represented aliases.

    I think you hit the nail on the head with your observation that there's an incentive for individual law enforcement minions to limit freedom and little incentive to expand freedom. I've experienced it from both sides of the coin. As a prosecutor I felt the concern that if I let off someone too light — or believed them when they said that they were actually innocent and the evidence was circumstantial and could be explained — that might result in letting a guilty person go, a person who might go out and do something nasty. By contrast, other than the good regard of public defenders who thought I was a reasonable guy, there was no incentive to cut people breaks. Now I fight that phenomenon from the other side. Young prosecutors, in particular, are terrified of the consequences of giving someone the benefit of the doubt.

  2. Ezra  •  Mar 20, 2008 @2:49 pm

    Worst. Strike. Ever.

  3. Ken  •  Mar 20, 2008 @3:10 pm

    Ezra needs to read the site forum occasionally.

  4. Ezra  •  Mar 20, 2008 @3:14 pm

    I was told there would be no math on the exam.