In a regime in which the police are corrupt, bribable, the police will naturally target the rich to maximize their revenue from bribes. This logic probably applies to the rest of the justice system also.
Therefore, measures to decrease and limit corruption in the justice system are to protect the rich. These measures were put in place using the political power of the rich. If you have politically supported an honest police force, did you realize this is what you were supporting?
A justice system that targets the rich will somewhat correct for the tendency of the rich use their wealth to get richer, perhaps through buying privacy or expensive lawyers to thwart becoming convicted of crimes.
If the justice system disproportionately targets the rich, more poor people will get away with crimes, especially crimes in which the poor steal from the rich. This is another income redistribution mechanism in the style of Robin Hood. Unfortunately, there will also be more instances of the poor committing crimes against each other, then the police not caring.
What else goes wrong?
The police might not target the rich if the sum of expected profit from bribes from many poor people would exceed the sum of bribes from the fewer number of rich people. Targeting does require investigative effort, a cost outlay: if you look at anyone closely enough, you will find some crime they have committed, but you do have to look at them closely enough, and that takes effort, a cost to be figured into expected profit from bribes.
Instead of bribes, can we induce incentive to maximize revenue from fines? Essentially the same system as bribes but made explicit. We probably want a system in which one goes to prison only if one cannot pay the fine. The conventional view of the guilty rich buying their freedom is resentment, but it should be the opposite: assuming the state is going after the fine revenues from the rich, it's good to be poor.
No comments :
Post a Comment