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“Are contracts between local governments and a private, for-profit entity inherently void as against public policy, where the contracts require the private entity to be principally responsible for vital law enforcement-related tasks, including generating, processing and defending in court the sole evidence of an alleged violator’s guilt, and the entity’s compensation is based on the number of criminal convictions obtained?” Is it true that “Such contingency agreements are condemned, particularly in the criminal law context, because even if they never result in actual harm, by their very nature they tend to invite corruption, and thus undermine the public’s faith in the fair and impartial administration of justice?”
15 Comments on “Ask the Best and Brightest: Are Performance-Related Red Light Camera Contracts Bogus?...”
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“Is it true…?”
Absoposalutely.
It’s bad enough that the prosecutors are somehow driven by their stats to push for plea bargains from people they know are innocent while judges appparently have a compulsion to lighten sentences for serious law breakers.
We don’t need anyone incentivised to send out tickets. Someone WILL end up getting shot over this.
What I don’t like are companies managing things like speed cameras that used to be the realm of the gov’t. Greed can then be added to the recipe.
It simply should not be legal for government or private enterprise to profit from crime.
If there is a profit motive for enforcement, there will always be a temptation for the enforcers to fudge the truth and to prosecute innocent people. It’s a dangerous slippery slope, one that we should avoid completely.
where the contracts require the private entity to be principally responsible for vital law enforcement-related tasks, including:
Let’s do this point by point:
generating,
This is ok, provided the system is transparent to inspection.
processing
Sure. They’re closest to the data.
and defending in court the sole evidence of an alleged violator’s guilt,
Well, someone has to. If I challenge a ticket and I have reasonable grounds, I’d expect the operator have a representative to either acquiesce to my argument, or defend their system.
and the entity’s compensation is based on the number of criminal convictions obtained
No. This is where it needs to stop. Implementation, licensing and a fixed yearly management fee are acceptable. Percentage cuts are not a good idea, if for no other reason than it guarantees abuse.
Money is money. Either the state will administer poorly with a great deal of greed. Or, private company will run it quite efficiently with a great deal of greed.
Unlike the government agency doing this directly, I imagine a private entity would be liable to civil penalties (i.e. getting sued) for bad conduct or incompetence. Only the most egregious examples of government misconduct (grandma getting blown away in botched drug-raid) put the government in the cross-hairs of lawyers. Not so with private entities.
Bogus or not, the fact is, red light and speeding cameras installed and maintained by private enterprise are a outlay-free source of non-tax income for municipalities, counties and states.
Think of it this way: a traditional traffic violation stop requires A) an officer, B) a patrol car. Both are quite expensive. If you want more traffic stops in your town (non-tax revenue), you gotta hire more police and buy more cars. Which requires you to raise taxes. Which defeats the purpose.
But when private enterprise comes to you and says they’ll put up their hardware and maintain it, your elected officials swoon. No out of pocket? Just a slice of the booty? No new taxes and more revenue? Where do we sign?
Those standing accused of violating traffic laws with private business cameras as witness can argue the finer points as outlined above. It all comes down to which side the judge’s bread is buttered upon whether or not your argument is successful or not.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the accused see the ticket in the mail, a photo of their plate, and meekly send in their check without challenge or complaint. And this is what your city officials are counting on.
The private companies that offer the best bid for a given quality specification should build roads and related infrastructure. If red light cameras are to be used they should be installed by private companies and then managed solely by the municipality or county in question. Private companies make police cars, they do not drive them.
Private companies have no place owning or managing roads or enforcing road (or any) laws.
When private companies compete against each other to make things the results are amazing.
When private companies are given monopolies to provide traditional government services (military, police, road management, etc.) the results are horrible.
For either private companies or governments to put performance requirements or quotas on red light cameras is only an invitation for fraud, and for bad policies like shortened (rear end collision causing) yellow lights.
Yes, but Private Companies, at least in Illinois, already own roads (toll-ways) and bridges, too.
Some would argue Private Companies do this more efficiently than government (seeing as profit is their motive, where-as government’s sole motive is to create more of itself, regardless and in spite of cost).
Private Companies, in their efficiency and sharing of profit, allow Government more revenue with less outlay in assets…
From an economic point of view, most citizens don’t care because their taxes haven’t increased (well, they do de facto once said citizen gets their ticket in the mail).
Yet from a civics point of view, the fact that Private Business is enforcing the law or keeping the peace should put shivers down the spine of any constitutionalist. The tin-foil hatters are already imagining Blackwater commandos on their neighborhood streetcorner.
Private companies that don’t face competition are not very efficient at all, the middle managers try to increase their fiefdoms at the expense of lean operation (they just get paid more to do so), and there is little accountability. It’s nice to be a monopoly, if you’re run poorly you just raise prices.
I live in Illinois, and you can tell the disdain that Illinois has for private ownership of infrastructure from the fact that they’re only willing to sell a road to Indiana and the airport in a bad neighborhood to private companies. At least for now (hopefully).
hmm, bounty hunters, private prisons, security-for-hire:
I don’t think you can make a prima facae case that these contracts are void for public policy reasons.
The argument that the presence of red light cameras is more likely to cause accidents — thus exposing the companies that operate them to liability is still possible. Imagine a person rear-ended while coming to a red light camera. Yes, the driver behind him is liable? Is the company that runs the camera liable for making the first driver stop too early for fear of a ticket?
Speed cameras are different; the speed limit is the speed limit.
I do wish we could get reports of how many police just decide to run red lights in non-emergency situations.
We have so many loopholes and opportunities for corruption with these systems. I’ve known dozens of speed trap and ‘fast light’ townships who were able to pay for their taxes just on manipulating the speed limits and lighting systems. In fact, many of our polices forces and modern traffic laws are being used for revenue collection rather than safety enforcers.
If we were looking at a transportation system that hasn’t been already tweaked to increase revenues, I could see it happening. But with that bottomless pit known as Magistrate’s Court where the government bodies are hellbent on revenues alone, I wouldn’t support it. Not at all.
no_slushbox has this one dead on. You guys have accused me of being a Laissez Faire capitalist, but I am not. In this case, I agree totally that many of these privatization schemes don’t work.
Of course, I believe it because as slushy has hinted, the result is not a free market driven company.
Yes. The answer to the question, is Yes.
The act of privatizing law enforcement functions is much worse than the creation of a conflict of interest or perverse incentive. What it has done is incentivized a “bad”. Imprisonment, running red lights, and speeding are all bads (as in the opposite of goods, if you missed micro-econ). They are all things that individuals and society do not want. Privatizing those government functions provides an entity with a sanction for wanting those bads to occur. Look at the deals that privatized toll roads. In many cases part of the deal was that the locality change speed limits and light timings on alternative routes, thereby increasing the bad that we on this board love to hate: traffic.
Good governance should not be about reward. If that is the only reason to exist, governance should disappear as there will be a free market answer to partake of the spoils.
If governments want to make a fair and just society, which seems to be the ideal, not that any are anywhere close to it, grasping at the money is unethical and, I would posit, criminal.
If the money is not there, a la taxes or fees, then government must shrink.
Any type of action to incentivize spending should be criminal.