Rules for Preventing Abuse of Power

[Deepbluediver]

In and of itself, no. There's way too many of them for that to be feasible in the first place, plus elections are only loosely tied to competency. I'm less worried about drug lords than I am about getting cops elected who have no real idea what they're doing, like what happens with judges in the states.

Normally when it comes to politicians, I take the attitude that "people deserve who they elect". Obviously that probably works out better for some jobs than for others. But what if communities could elect someone who was more like a"peacekeeper", rather than a law-enforcement agent? Someone who had limited powers of detention or served as a liaison to the police? Or if residents could request that this person be present during police-actions, to ensure that there is a civilian witness.
Is there any way that might work or could be beneficial to the situation?

Edit: Let me try to put this another way- threatening to punish people doesn't seem to have stopped them from wanting to commit crimes. However, despite what you might read in the newspaper in terms of both the last few decades and compared to other significant cultures a few centuries back, humanity seems to be reaching new lows in levels of crime (or violent crime at least). Laws aren't harsher- indeed if anything they seem to be less cruel in many cases, but because of a rising standard of living, people feel less impulse to commit crimes (usually). So how do we extend that sentiment to avoiding abuses of power?

[Tailsteak]

Alright, I mentioned I had some rules, so here they are -

1) Whistleblowers should always be protected.

The first person to be convicted in regards to the CIA torture thing was the whistleblower himself. I think that anyone accusing someone in a position of power of significant wrongdoing should be protected - their identity kept from the media, their employment protected, etc... at least while the question of the initial accusation is unresolved. Now granted, I'm not saying that if someone's frothing at the mouth and accusing you of raping their entire extended family that you have to keep employing them, and certainly you can bust them for slander as soon as you're proven innocent, but not until then.

2) Any and all government positions should have term limits.

Whether municipal, provincial or federal, if you're taking taxpayer funds to oversee something, you shouldn't be more than ten years in any given position, and no more than twenty years working in government total. Been a cop for two decades? Sorry, it's illegal for you to continue wearing a badge. Go flip burgers.

3) Any and all government bodies should demographically resemble the people they govern.

Again, it doesn't matter if it's municipal, provincial or federal. If you're in charge of a population that's 66% black (for example), and you have more than a hundred employees, you've got no excuse for your employees not to be at least, say, 40% black. And this applies anywhere - border town with a high concentration of Latinos? Hire some. Chinatown precinct? Hire some. While we're at it, you really should have at least, say, 33% ladies at any given time. I'm not saying your government body, whatever it is, has to be a perfect 1:1 microcosm of society, but having some brothers on the payroll might have helped the Ferguson situation, at least from a PR perspective.

4) Hell yes body cams.

I work in a call center. I'm in an office environment, sitting looking at a screen for ten hours a day. As far as I know, we've never had an instance of violence or theft in the workplace. And yet I'm videotaped entering and leaving the building, all my call time and computer activities are logged, I have to swipe my ID card to get into anything. And y'know what? I don't mind it. I think most employers, public or private, should be logging their employees' behaviour, certainly as long as they're punched in and on company property, and ideally whenever they're on the job regardless of where that job is. If you're being paid, the person paying you should have records of what you're doing, and if you're a public servant, the public is who's paying you.

[Nepene]

While I agree with most of your suggestions- body cameras are good and proven to work, racial diversity is good, whistleblowers are helpful- I doubt term limits would do much more than replicate the situation in political places where the politicians rush to do whatever is necessary to get highly paid positions, backstabbing, breaking relationships, and avoiding their responsibility because they'll be out soon. It took about 24 hours for prison guards to become corrupt in the Stanford prison experiments. Training everyone and firing of incompetents is necessary to solve police incompetence. For politicians frequent audits that could lead to firing would help.

[luislsacc]

Body cameras? Alright, seems good, as long as they're only on when they're on the clock and the cop can tell dispatch to turn them off when he/she goes to the toilet, sure.

Term limits? Eehh, it's actually pretty common for a politician etc. to help out a company with the assurance that when they're done in politics, they've got a high paying position there. I think a more interesting ( perhaps worse, but more interesting) situation would be for anyone who occupied a position of power in the government for a term to occupy a low power position afterwards, for the same amount of time. Were you President for 8 years? Now you've got 8 years of being a clerk at the DMV in your hometown.

Ensuring racial and gender diversity in the precint? Well, besides ignoring some pretty important principles of the administrative branch, I don't have so much faith in this one. A policeman's job is pretty mentally taxing, and as such it's ideal for the people employed to be motivated and driven towards their job. If Jack only got the job because he was black and applied ( a pretty likely scenario with this rule), he's under a larger risk of cracking under pressure. Honestly, I'd exchange this step for stricter psychological screenings of police officers, and regular psychologist visits. Not because I believe psychologists are that useful a job, but more as a means of increasing accountability for both the system and the officer.

And to Nepene

It took about 24 hours for prison guards to become corrupt in the Stanford prison experiments.

A short reply.

[Nepene]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Experiment

The particular result I was noting has been replicated. They took around three days to become corrupt.

[Deepbluediver]

1) Whistleblowers should always be protected.

Ok, but in American they don't "prove people innocent", they find them not-guilty. It's an important legal distinction, and I'm wary of becoming a system where we have trial by public opinion.

2) Any and all government positions should have term limits.

This feels kind of like punishing many for the sins of a few. Especially for positions where experience can be very valuable, like teaching.

3) Any and all government bodies should demographically resemble the people they govern.

This one...this one is I really start having problems. It's feels like you are saying that you can't properly govern a population unless you've got the same amount of melanin in your skin as they do. Racial quotas elevate who you where born as over any sort of qualifications of competency or experience. IMO it's just another flavor of racism.

Also, what about other demographic factors, like age, religion, sexual orientation, and education or income levels?

4) Hell yes body cams.

The biggest obstacle to this at the moment is the initial cost, though the ever-advancing march of technology will inevitably bring that down. Long-term though, who is going to manage the massive amount of information created? And who will have the keys to the vault? How do we mesh this with situations where keeping information secret is vital for security or the fact that people don't stop being whatever their job is even when off the clock? (aka influence peddling)

[crayzz]

If Jack only got the job because he was black and applied ( a pretty likely scenario with this rule), he's under a larger risk of cracking under pressure.

I feel like nearly everyone making this criticism is engaging in ad hoc rhetoric: bringing up the possibility of a bad outcome from a proposal in question, while ignoring the possibility of a bad outcome in the status quo. Yes, a less qualified black person being hired over a more qualified white person is bad. The reverse, however, happens now, and unless you can demonstrate that quotas are worse than the status quo, I'll take quotas provisionally and see how they play out.

My stipulation would be that the quota is be based around the population applying for the position, not the residential population. If the population is 66/34, but the applying population is only 20/80, it doesn't make sense to say that 40% of those accepted should be black. If you have 1000 applicants and only 500 positions, then every black person needs to be hired.

There might be other factors that lead to less applications from certain groups, but those factors are not addressed by quotas.

(I am ignoring the argument that quotas set precedent and enable role models, thereby socially aiding marginalized populations, mostly because its an abstract can of worms I don't want to get into.)

[Deepbluediver]

I feel like nearly everyone making this criticism is engaging in ad hoc rhetoric: bringing up the possibility of a bad outcome from a proposal in question, while ignoring the possibility of a bad outcome in the status quo. Yes, a less qualified black person being hired over a more qualified white person is bad. The reverse, however, happens now, and unless you can demonstrate that quotas are worse than the status quo, I'll take quotas provisionally and see how they play out.

My stipulation would be that the quota is be based around the population applying for the position, not the residential population. If the population is 66/34, but the applying population is only 20/80, it doesn't make sense to say that 40% of those accepted should be black. If you have 1000 applicants and only 500 positions, then every black person needs to be hired.

I don't like it because it's an inherently racist system, that says the color of your skin is more important to whether or not you can do a job well than literally any other factor.

It seems like it's admitting that casual racism is a good thing, and that rather than trying to get rid of people's prejudices we're just going to make it so that people don't have to deal with anyone of any other race. I'm worried that in the long run it would actually make racism worse.


Also, why stop at race? AFAIK, the federal government outlaws discrimination based on race, age, religion, and sexual orientation (feel free to add any that I've missed). Are we going to include those calculations in our hiring statistics as well?

[luislsacc]

DBD you missed gender, income, political stance, work history... I don't know if we can find an end to it.

[Nepene]

I don't like it because it's an inherently racist system, that says the color of your skin is more important to whether or not you can do a job well than literally any other factor.

It seems like it's admitting that casual racism is a good thing, and that rather than trying to get rid of people's prejudices we're just going to make it so that people don't have to deal with anyone of any other race. I'm worried that in the long run it would actually make racism worse.


Also, why stop at race? AFAIK, the federal government outlaws discrimination based on race, age, religion, and sexual orientation (feel free to add any that I've missed). Are we going to include those calculations in our hiring statistics as well?

It says, more, that historically we've recognized that police departments do the job of racial integration extremely poorly and the black community is extremely distrustful of it as a result and are unwilling to aid them, rendering them rather useless. We also recognize that the training of the police is already not optimal, since they do things like choke people to death, pick on black people far more often than whites. Their skill at the job isn't producing great results so whatever selection criteria aren't producing that great a job. Trust of the police by the community is a major factor in their success rate- they should be helping out a community not harassing it.

As such, moderately valuable black people are more valuable than highly valuable white people by whatever criteria the police use to select, and will far better enable them to do a good job. They will have to deal with people of different races due to it being mixed race. If similar situations arose with sexual orientation or age or religion similar things could be done.