5 ms·

This is appalling. In my opinion, the police and/or any governing body should absolutely not have any kind of financial interest in people committing crimes.

by blhack 15y ago

This is appalling. In my opinion, the police and/or any governing body should absolutely not have any kind of financial interest in people committing crimes. They're there to prevent crimes, not profit from them. Consider speed cameras. What does my local government (Tempe, Arizona) have a higher interest in: earning revenue from speed cameras, or stopping speeders? It would cost them money to stop speeders (in the form of lost ticker revenue). If they keep people speeding, they keep collecting money. Any fines or seized funds should be given back to the community in the form of a tax rebate, not kept by the governing body as a financial incentive. (This is a financial incentive for the community overall, and I understand that this is also a problem. However, I feel like giving money back to those you supposedly committed the crime against [the people] is better than the alternative)

barrkel 15y ago
Presumably there is a degree to which the local community is willing to be taxed; the more rebates they can expect, the more you can increase that tax. My point is that reducing taxes with rebates, and keeping those revenues, amount to the same thing economically.
- blhack 15y ago
  You would literally have to amend the tax code every time a disbursement check was issued. If you did this monthly, or quarterly, it would be impossible to raise taxes in accordance with tickets. Or, you could just require community service instead of money for all tickets.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    I think you're being a tiny bit silly in your objection; the amount of rebate will, in all probability, be a normal distribution and will be in a reasonable range to a high degree of certainty. If you get a rebate of 90 one year, but 110 the next, you may not find an additional tax burden of 100 especially onerous, particularly if it builds up in an incremental way. I have only a little idea of what counts as community service in the US, but from what Wikipedia lists, community service labour would enable cutbacks in state expenditure in those areas.
- jessriedel 15y ago
  The money should go to part of the government which are not responsible for enforcing the law for which the money was collected. Even if spread over the entire government, including the police department, it would dilute the amount enough to severely reduce the improper incentive.
nathanb 15y ago
So if we posit that the money shouldn't go to the police or the government in general, where should it go?
- there 15y ago
  schools, like the lotto.
  - blhack 15y ago
    I would also accept: parks, and bike paths. In all honesty, I'd be totally happy if the money went into a fund that was used to throw a block party for the town at the end of the year.
  - mquander 15y ago
    I would point out that by sending lottery money to schools, we're (to some degree) incentivizing schools to produce mathematically illiterate people. One might say the same for sending criminals' money to schools.
    - anonymoushn 15y ago
      I don't think this is true. Lottery revenue is significantly less than all school funding, so while we nominally send lottery revenue to schools, saying that we do so doesn't really mean anything because money is fungible. Schools could only benefit if they could produce so many innumerate (but moneyed) people that the total revenue of the lottery exceeded their total funding.
    - uxp 15y ago
      I would like to see some evidence behind this, as the argument is a straw man in my opinion. In my state, taxes collected on Alcohol and Tobacco are both sent into the pool marked for education, yet we have the lowest smoking rate in the country and are among the 5 states with the lowest number of drinkers. With your logic, the only thing I can attribute to the statistical numbers is a poor education system because not enough people drink or smoke, which indirectly makes the education system worse and fails to teach people to smoke and drink in order to get a better education. I'm sorry. This just doesn't make sense. Education systems don't "profit" from the few alcoholics and few smokers here. Claiming that taxes from lotteries or gambling will incentivize schools into failing to teach children to count or be responsible with money is way too far fetched for me to grasp. The time frame from when a child is in school learning math to when they are legally able to buy a scratch card at the corner gas station is too far apart. If you have some evidence that shows that I am wrong, please let me know. On the other side of the coin, with this article, the ones that are receiving the money taken during drug busts or in this case online gambling ring busts are the ones that end up with the money. It's not laundered through every different department before it hits the city wallet, usually weeks later, not years or even decades.

by blhack 15y ago

barrkel 15y ago

Presumably there is a degree to which the local community is willing to be taxed; the more rebates they can expect, the more you can increase that tax. My point is that reducing taxes with rebates, and keeping those revenues, amount to the same thing economically.

blhack 15y ago
You would literally have to amend the tax code every time a disbursement check was issued. If you did this monthly, or quarterly, it would be impossible to raise taxes in accordance with tickets. Or, you could just require community service instead of money for all tickets.
- barrkel 15y ago
  I think you're being a tiny bit silly in your objection; the amount of rebate will, in all probability, be a normal distribution and will be in a reasonable range to a high degree of certainty. If you get a rebate of 90 one year, but 110 the next, you may not find an additional tax burden of 100 especially onerous, particularly if it builds up in an incremental way. I have only a little idea of what counts as community service in the US, but from what Wikipedia lists, community service labour would enable cutbacks in state expenditure in those areas.
jessriedel 15y ago
The money should go to part of the government which are not responsible for enforcing the law for which the money was collected. Even if spread over the entire government, including the police department, it would dilute the amount enough to severely reduce the improper incentive.

nathanb 15y ago

So if we posit that the money shouldn't go to the police or the government in general, where should it go?

there 15y ago
schools, like the lotto.
- blhack 15y ago
  I would also accept: parks, and bike paths. In all honesty, I'd be totally happy if the money went into a fund that was used to throw a block party for the town at the end of the year.
- mquander 15y ago
  I would point out that by sending lottery money to schools, we're (to some degree) incentivizing schools to produce mathematically illiterate people. One might say the same for sending criminals' money to schools.
  - anonymoushn 15y ago
    I don't think this is true. Lottery revenue is significantly less than all school funding, so while we nominally send lottery revenue to schools, saying that we do so doesn't really mean anything because money is fungible. Schools could only benefit if they could produce so many innumerate (but moneyed) people that the total revenue of the lottery exceeded their total funding.
  - uxp 15y ago
    I would like to see some evidence behind this, as the argument is a straw man in my opinion. In my state, taxes collected on Alcohol and Tobacco are both sent into the pool marked for education, yet we have the lowest smoking rate in the country and are among the 5 states with the lowest number of drinkers. With your logic, the only thing I can attribute to the statistical numbers is a poor education system because not enough people drink or smoke, which indirectly makes the education system worse and fails to teach people to smoke and drink in order to get a better education. I'm sorry. This just doesn't make sense. Education systems don't "profit" from the few alcoholics and few smokers here. Claiming that taxes from lotteries or gambling will incentivize schools into failing to teach children to count or be responsible with money is way too far fetched for me to grasp. The time frame from when a child is in school learning math to when they are legally able to buy a scratch card at the corner gas station is too far apart. If you have some evidence that shows that I am wrong, please let me know. On the other side of the coin, with this article, the ones that are receiving the money taken during drug busts or in this case online gambling ring busts are the ones that end up with the money. It's not laundered through every different department before it hits the city wallet, usually weeks later, not years or even decades.