Category: Law

Serbs seeking a bit of extra
protection or perhaps a helicopter for the weekend can now turn
to the police, which from this month will be renting out its
personnel, transport and even animals for private use.

More here.  Of course, there is a history of private firms hiring police in Washington, DC.

Thanks to Carl Close for the pointer.

You’ll find it here; thanks to Tim Lambert for the pointer.

My research on bounty hunters shows that they are more effective than the police in recapturing criminals.  I’m often asked (and sometimes told), however, about the potential for abuse and mistaken arrests.  No one ever bothers, however, to ask how bounty hunters compare on the abuse score with the police.  My suspicion is that the bounty hunters would come out better because they know that a mistake can put them out of business while the police may routinely break down the wrong door under cover of law.

Some data on the potential for abuse and mistaken arrest or worse from the police is provided in a new Cato report, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, by Radley Balko.  The report notes:

Over the
last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization
of its civilian law enforcement, along
with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of
paramilitary police units (most commonly called
Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine
police work. The most common use of SWAT
teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually
with forced, unannounced entry into the
home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per
year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting
nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and
wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having
their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually
by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units
dressed not as police officers but as soldiers.

Along with the paper is an interactive map showing hundreds of mistaken raids over the past several decades, a number of which lead to the deaths of innocents.

I have heard this claim, or similar versions thereof, many times in the recent immigration debates.  It sounds so uncontroversial.  Who is against enforcing the law?  The law is, after all…the law.  It was passed by lawmakers.  Our country is built upon the law.  We also hear "let us first secure our border" before proceeding with other immigration reforms.

The economist is more likely to think in terms of the margin.  We enforce laws up to some point.  After that point we let transgressions slide, if only probabilistically.  This is true for every law on the books.

Many murders and robberies are committed each year.  No one says "let us first enforce the law" before proceeding with, say, tax reform and other beneficial improvements.  We can’t nail every tax cheat, or even most of them.  To truly enforce the law — in the sense of bringing transgressions to their minimum or zero level — would bankrupt us, turn us into a totalitarian state, or most likely both.  The true question is not one of whether we should enforce the law, but rather of how much.  Whether we admit it or not, we are all willing to allow some amount of illegal immigration. 

Similarly, no rational business firm would vow to stamp out all employee theft before proceeding with a beneficial organizational change.

Most or perhaps all critics of illegal immigration think that open borders would be a bad idea.  I agree.  But their portrait of open borders betrays their other view that we are not enforcing immigration law right now.  Critics paint a picture, perhaps a justified one, of untold millions swarming suddenly into the United States under open borders.  It is evident to me that plenty of the Indians in Hyderabad, my current locale, would love to come.

But think what this implies.  It means that current levels of law enforcement are in fact keeping out most of the people who would like to enter the country.  It means we are enforcing the law, for better or worse, more than not.

Simply repeating the mantra that "we should enforce the law" is not itself a good argument for a tougher immigration policy. 

Get him in front of some other bloggers and say:

It’s liability per se that isn’t justified by libertarian standards.  Under Lockean property rights theory, you own physical things, not the values of those things.  It is for this reason that if you set up shop next to a competitor, you are not infringing his property rights, even if his business ends up being  worth less.  So let’s say I steal your painting.  Yes, you do deserve your painting back.  It is yours.  But say I steal your painting and lose it or wreck it.  That should be the end of the story.  You never owned the "value of that painting."  You simply owned the physical painting.  You are not due compensation.  If you take my money as compensation for your loss, that is simply another theft.  All this talk about the "doctrine of rights forfeiture" is handwaving.  The forfeiture doctrine is a convenient utilitarian fiction (which I will partially endorse), not libertarian theory.  Rights aggressors do not, in fact, lose their own rights in turn.  Why should they?  Evreyone in prison is there unjustly and yes that includes murderers.  I will, of course, accept many of these injustices for utilitarian reasons; I am a good pluralist.

One of France’s most popular rappers will appear in court today charged
with offending public decency with a song in which he referred to
France as a "slut" and vowed to "piss" on Napoleon and Charles de
Gaulle. Monsieur R, whose real name is Richard Makela, could face three
years in prison or a €75,000 (£51,000) fine after an MP from the ruling
UMP party launched legal action against him over his album Politikment
Incorrekt.

Here is the full story.

Farmer Yan Shihai was happily married for more than 30 years. Then late last year, seemingly out of the blue, the 57-year-old grandfather and his loving wife got a divorce.

Within months, all three of his adult children and their spouses also split up. So did almost every other married person in Yan’s village of 4,000 – an astounding 98% of Renhe’s married couples officially parted, according to the local government.

But instead of tension or tears, the couples waiting in line at the local registry to end their marriages were practically jolly. They believed they were taking advantage of a legal loophole that allowed them to get an extra apartment.

As they understood the compensation deal, each married couple would receive a small two-bedroom apartment in return for their land and farmhouse. Those divorced would get a one-bedroom apartment each. The villagers figured that would be a better deal, that they could live in one apartment and make a little extra income from selling or renting out the extra one.

The government, however, changed the rules and denied the new benefit.  The final result?

…most of the former marriages are in tatters. Considering the prospect of a future without financial security, remarrying now simply seems too much of a hassle. Promises are souring. Stunned villagers are watching their life partners drift off. Some have found new love. Others are deciding to try out freedom from a marriage they never thought they wanted to leave.

Here is the full story, and thanks to Tim Sullivan for the pointer.

Mexico may be decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of the following drugs:

Cocaine. Heroin. LSD. Marijuana. PCP. Opium. Synthetic opiates. Mescaline. Peyote. Psilocybin mushrooms. Amphetamines. Methamphetamines.

The list is here.  If this goes through (even if Fox doesn’t apply it to U.S. citizens, enforcement may dry up) we would be outsourcing some of our drug dealing to the Mexicans.  Why risk legal trouble in the States when you can go crazy over spring break in Cancun?  I am not sure the nominal price will be lower, given transport costs.  But if you are afraid of the law, you will have new and better drug options.

If you think the problem is isolated doses of drug-taking, and that the law is what deters people at home, our drug problem will get worse.  If you think the problem is the secondary effects of the drug trade, such as gang involvement and crime, things will get better.

If this new option gets you to start trying drugs, you might opt for recreational, non-addictive drugs.  Heroin is out, if only because it is hard to get back to Mexico for each fix.  That appears to fit the better-case scenario.

If you can go crazy, absolutely crazy, in Cancun or Tijuana, is that a substitute for or complement to domestic drug-taking?

Is substitution more likely if people take drugs for "signalling" or for "experimentation" reasons?

Which is a bigger problem: how stoned you are, or how many days you are stoned for?

Do U.S. prostitutes feel that Thailand stimulates demand for their product?  I suspect not.

Let us say such a change in Mexico would have beneficial effects on the U.S. drug problem.  Might we not also consider "drug law holidays"; periodically you could take all the drugs you want without legal penalty, but this lasts only for five days during the year?

Every year Tower Records used to have a big post-Christmas sale.  During the year I bought many fewer CDs.

If periodic sales would boost rather than lower long-term demand, won’t current drug dealers already be using such sales?  In which case some extra sales are likely to diminish demand…?

The brouhaha is reviewed by David Glenn in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Millions of passengers traveling through Russia soon will have to take a lie detector test as part of new airport security measures that could eventually be applied throughout the country.
    The technology, to be introduced at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport as early as July, is intended to identify terrorists and drugs smugglers. But many passengers will be chilled by the set of four questions they will have to answer into a machine, including, "Have you ever lied to the authorities?"
    The machine asks four questions: The first is for full identity; the second, unnerving in its Soviet-style abruptness, demands: "Have you ever lied to the authorities?" It then asks whether either weapons or narcotics are being carried.
    To cut delays, passengers will take the tests after taking off their shoes and putting baggage through the X-ray machines. He doesn’t get his shoes back until he satisfactorily answers the questions. Each test will take up to a minute. "If a person fails to pass the test, he is accompanied by a special guard to a cubicle where he is asked questions in a more intense atmosphere," says Vladimir Kornilov, IT director for the airport.
    The fully automated instrument to be used, known as the "Truth Verifier," is hardly the polygraph familiar from old spy thrillers. Passengers will simply speak into a handset. Thanks to "layered-voice-analysis technology," the system, developed by an Israeli company, can even establish whether answers come from the memory or the imagination.

Here is the full story.

Perhaps this topic needs a little public choice analysis:

Many Sub-Saharan African countries are extremely poor. It has been argued that the marriage system (in particular polygyny) is one contributing factor to the lack of development in this region. Polygyny leads to low incentives to save, depressing the capital stock and output. Enforcing monogamy might seem like an obvious solution. However, such a law will have winners and losers. In this paper, we investigate the transition from a polygynous to a monogamous steady state.  We find that the initial old men will be big losers. The reason is that they had married many wives in anticipation of the brideprice that future daughters will fetch. However, due to the marriage reform, the value of daughters depreciates rapidly, as the brideprice changes from positive to negative. This increases savings and thereby the aggregate capital stock. The interest rate falls and the initial young suffer a loss in capital income. Thus, all men alive during the reform period experience a loss in utility. Young women and all future generations will benefit.  However, the future gains are not enough to compensate the losers. This may explain why many African countries experience strong resistance to changing their marriage laws.

Here is the paper, and thanks to Alina Stefanescu for the pointer.  Here is Alex’s previous post on polygamy, which leads you back to mine as well.  Here are more links.