Crime and monopoly in America

A subscriber and long-time supporter of THE VOLUNTARYIST, Hans Sherrer, has sent me a copy of his book length manuscript, THE GULAG AMERICANA: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PENAL STATE. The following commentary is largely based on Mr. Sherrer's draft. For further information about the availability of the book, send a stamped, self-addressed postcard to THE VOLUNTARYIST. Inquiries,will be answered by the author as soon as a publication date is known.

Introduction

As we go to press, more than six million Americans are under the control of the criminal justice system in the United States. Of these, nearly two million are incarcerated in prisons and jails, and another four million are under the constraints of probation and parole. Due to the fact that the penal system has grown nearly ten fold during the last 25 years, we now have more to fear from the totalitarian aspects of government "protection" than from what we normally think of as criminal incursions and invasions against our lives and property. The government-run criminal justice system not only doesn't increase the safety of Americans and their property but actually decreases it. Most advocates of limited government argue that the primary purpose of government is the protection of life, liberty, and property. If that were true, then government in the United States has failed miserably at accomplishing its stated purpose. However, its failure has only been partial. The monolithic physical and all-pervasive legal structure that has been created in the name of protecting Americans from street criminals has been instrumental in the establishment of the most powerful political entity in the history of the world.

The Criminal Justice System Doesn't Protect You

There can be no absolute proof that free market protection agencies would protect us more cheaply than government monopolized services. But it is possible to show that the growth of the government criminal justice system since the early 1970's has had almost no appreciable effect on reducing violent street crime and nonviolent property crime against Americans. In a classic example of perverse consequences, the more the people believe that they are being protected by the police, the less inclined they are to engage in the self-help activities that actually do increase their safety and reduce street crime. The extraordinarily negative impact that the criminal justice system has on American society is highlighted by the fact that for every dollar that is lost by people, residences, and businesses to crime, the criminal justice system spends more than ten dollars. In other words, through the extraction of taxes to support its activities, the justice system magnifies the amount lost by American society due to street crime by a factor of greater than ten to one.

In addition to being forced to financially support the dead weight of the criminal justice system, Americans have to pay again if they want to engage the services of a private company that specializes in the protection of people and their property. There is no question that if the criminal justice system was a private company, its inability to provide a service worth paying for would have caused its customers to abandon it to the dustbin of history over a century ago. Government "crime protection" does not have the same incentives as private protection. Private agencies flourish by successfully protecting their patrons. The more they succeed, the more customers they attract. Government law enforcement agencies flourish by failing to accomplish their stated objectires. The truth of the matter, is that the less they prevent crime or protect people, the more money the government can demand from the public in the form of taxation - to prevent crime!

This is illustrated by the fact that the loudest and most effective public relations efforts to expand the budgets of police agencies on the local, state, and federal level all revolve around their failure to stop crime. The perennial plea to the legislatures is always: "If you will only give us more money, then we will be able to catch the `bad guys' who might do you harm."All federal crime bills have been passed in an atmosphere of hysteria surrounding a real or imagined threat to Americans from the designated "bad guys" of the moment. For example, The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was only passed because of the hysterical political rhetoric surrounding the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995. Since increased funding for the justice system is dependent on visible failures, without competition capable of moderating their behavior, the incentive of police agencies in the United States is to fail at reducing crime or otherwise contributing to making people feel safe.

In a competitive market environment, as you succeed, so you grow and prosper, while in the political environment, failure is almost a prerequisite to growth and prosperity. Consequently, the criminal justice system is a political institution that has a life of its own. It is a classic example of pork barrel politics at its best. Like all other political programs, the criminal justice system is driven by the interests of those within the political sphere who benefit from it, and not by those outside the political realm who are its ostensible beneficiaries. Every single person involved in or employed by it depends on Americans believing that this political institution is the only way they can be protected from criminals. Their livelihood depends on it. As Professor Harold Pepinsky noted in MYTHS THAT CAUSE CRIME, two of the strongest factors working in favor of the justice system continuing in the form we now know it are that people are used to the presence of police and criminal courts, and that its employees would probably create severe civil disturbances if they were to lose their jobs.

In other words, the actions of the criminal justice system in fighting crime not only don't work, they are not intended to work! Police, prosecutors, and judges are not crime fighting professionals, they are more like firemen who moonlight as arsonists making sure they don't run out of fires to put out. In his book, ... AND THE POOR GET PRISON, criminologist Jeffrey Reiman described this fact in the following way: "The goal of our criminal justice system is not to reduce crime or achieve justice, but to project to the American people a visible image of the threat of crime. To do this, it must maintain-the existence of a sizable population of criminals. To do this, it must fail in the struggle to reduce crime." The functioning of the justice system is not complicated to understand. It is a bureaucratic organization that provides jobs and power to those involved in its administration. In short, history has proven that governmental crime fighting efforts have no attributable effects on reducing crime, but they constantly maintain the appearance that they are nevertheless necessary to contain it. Government provision of protective services depends on the myths propagated by the government's educational system. that the police are your friends and that "law and order" are inseparable. As John Hasnas pointed out in Whole No. 98 of THE VOLUNTARYIST (p. 3), "The state nurtures this [confusing myth] because it is the public's inability to distinguish order from law that generates its fundamental support for the state. As long as the public identifies order with [statist] law, it will believe that an orderly society is impossible without the law that the state provides. And as long as the public believes this, it will continue to support the state almost regard to how oppressive it may become."

Security and the Market

Government protection, as Bob LeFevre argued does not protect. Government intervention makes th situation worse, and only leads to calls for further government intervention. Some free market econo mists have argued that the principles of liberty and competition should be applied to the provision of pro tection and defense services. Gustave de Molinari the first economist to suggest this idea, pointed ou that society as a whole would suffer if the produc tion of security, as he termed it, was not subjected tr the forces of market place competition.

The option the consumer retains of being able to buy security wherever he pleases brings about a constant emulation among all the producers, each producer striving to maintain or augment his clientele with the attraction of cheapness, or faster, more complete, and better service.

If on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned.... In a word, all the abuses inherent in a monopoly or in communism crop up.

While these comments appear as if they could have been written yesterday, they were actually pub lished in 1849!

The single, most effective action that can be taken to reduce crime and violence in America today is to make people understand that the free market could provide them with protection. All providers of protection and security should be subject to free market competition. Make the police forces and judicial services compete for customers and earn their revenue like all other businesses. Let the market - not the political process - determine how much protection people want.

It is, however, necessary to remember that criminals will continue to exist. As Murray Rothbard reiterates in his essay, "Myth and Truth About Libertarianism," there is no warrant for assuming that crime would ever totally disappear from a free society. Whatever the nature of man there is no justification for the State. If all men were disposed to be good and none had criminal tendencies, then there would be no need for the State. But, if all men were evil, the case for the State would be just as weak. Who would restran the evildoers in government who held most of the guns and legally held all the power to coerce others? "Whatever the nature of man, liberty is the most moral and practical system."

Copyright Voluntaryists Aug 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved