4 ms·

I wonder what is with those brownie points? Do they transform into big buck$?

loup-vaillant 16y ago
Promotions, or just having their superiors leave them alone. We have similar problems in France with quotas. Policemen are encouraged to arrest a certain number of people per year, or else. The problem here is that they are evaluated by the number of arrests (easy to assess), instead of the actual efficiency of their work (very difficult to assess accurately). This evaluation method is of course as disastrous as lines of codes are for programmers. As a result, 1% of the French population has been arrested at least once last year. And this number is increasing. Another example would be the number of American citizens that are on the Terrorist Watch List (I recall 4% [citation needed]). Official may get brownie points for putting one in, but never for putting one out. (Plus, there's might be an almost non-null chance that the guy might be, or know, a terrorist. Perhaps.)
kls 16y ago
Increased budget next year.
- jbooth 16y ago
  These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.
  - kls 16y ago
    Yes it was more of a guess than anything substantiated. Feel free to down-vote it. It deserves it.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Thanks. Big pet peeve of mine. Pretty much all state and local-run services have had a hatchet taken to them every single year for the last 10 years, and then people have the gall to get angry at the idea of paying people for public service, or advocate for cutting more teachers/cops/firefighters/social workers because quote "government is too big". Cut somewhere else, these people actually do things.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    So not an increased budget but instead more statistics in the fight to retain their current headcount?
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Now you're talking. Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.
hga 16y ago
If they take the children away, yes, they get a "bounty" you might say for each child removed from a family. This is from that 1974 law mentioned in the article. Once you understand the incentive system it all starts to make sense.

Promotions, or just having their superiors leave them alone. We have similar problems in France with quotas. Policemen are encouraged to arrest a certain number of people per year, or else. The problem here is that they are evaluated by the number of arrests (easy to assess), instead of the actual efficiency of their work (very difficult to assess accurately). This evaluation method is of course as disastrous as lines of codes are for programmers. As a result, 1% of the French population has been arrested at least once last year. And this number is increasing. Another example would be the number of American citizens that are on the Terrorist Watch List (I recall 4% [citation needed]). Official may get brownie points for putting one in, but never for putting one out. (Plus, there's might be an almost non-null chance that the guy might be, or know, a terrorist. Perhaps.)

kls 16y ago

Increased budget next year.

jbooth 16y ago
These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.
- kls 16y ago
  Yes it was more of a guess than anything substantiated. Feel free to down-vote it. It deserves it.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Thanks. Big pet peeve of mine. Pretty much all state and local-run services have had a hatchet taken to them every single year for the last 10 years, and then people have the gall to get angry at the idea of paying people for public service, or advocate for cutting more teachers/cops/firefighters/social workers because quote "government is too big". Cut somewhere else, these people actually do things.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  So not an increased budget but instead more statistics in the fight to retain their current headcount?
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Now you're talking. Maybe if these guys were funded to a reasonable, lean level (as opposed to complete funding starvation), we'd get better behavior. If you compare their funding level compared to, say, drug enforcement, it's clear that we're a little misbalanced. "Catching the crooks" always sells better than "keeping kids out of juvie so they don't become crooks", no matter which one is more cost-effective.

hga 16y ago

If they take the children away, yes, they get a "bounty" you might say for each child removed from a family. This is from that 1974 law mentioned in the article. Once you understand the incentive system it all starts to make sense.