Who Vouches For You?
A <600 word summary of my crime law proposal:
Who Vouches For You?: A Radical Crime Law Proposal
The legal system used by most ancient societies was usually close to A-sues-B-for-cash. But in the last few centuries, states added “crime law,” wherein the state investigates, sues, and imprisons “criminals.” These centrally-run one-size-fits-all bureaucratic systems don’t innovate well or adapt well to individual conditions. And even though most of your “constitutional rights” are regarding such systems, they seem badly broken.
In the ancient world, a stranger who came to town could be trusted more if a local “vouched” for them. We still use vouching today in bonded contractors, in open source software, in organized crime, and in requiring most everyone to get an insurer ready to pay if they cause a car accident. I propose requiring everyone to get an insurer to vouch for them regarding any crimes they might commit. If you are found guilty of a crime, you must pay a fine, your “voucher” must pay if you don’t, but then pays to punish you according to your contract with them. This fine in part pays the private bounty-hunter who convinced the court of your guilt. Competing bounty-hunters obey the law more than public police, as they find it harder to maintain a blue-wall-of-silence.
To lower your voucher premiums, you might agree to (1) prison, torture, or exile, if caught, (2) prior limits on your freedom like curfews, travel restrictions, ankle bracelets, and their reading your emails, and (3) co-liability wherein you and your buddies are all punished if any one of you is found guilty. In this system, the state still decides what behaviors are crimes and if any one accusation is true, and it sets fine and bounty levels regarding how hard to discourage and detect each kind of crime. But each person chooses their own “constitutional rights” via their voucher contract, and vouchers acquire incentives and opportunity to innovate and adapt, by searching in a large space of ways to discourage crime.
Some key details:
Judges and juries can retain discretion to consider case details when setting guilt or fines.
If fines vary with wealth or income, then the rich don’t get a free pass to commit crimes.
We could subsidize premiums, or offer a public option, to poor ex-cons for which we feel sorry.
Other poor ex-cons might have to work for a while at isolated ships or mining or logging camps.
The unvouched must be punished severely, not via fines, to make violations rare, as with license plates today.
Maybe each person wears RFID of voucher-client ID (VCID). Maybe violators are “outlaws” not protected by law.
It is enough to know VCID to charge with crime, no need to physically detain them.
Key criteria for being a voucher is showing that can pay fines.
Vouchers are held to contracts until clients find new vouchers.
Maybe contracts worse for clients over time if not renewed, to cover revealed-criminal scenarios.
Maybe contracts do not cover pre-existing crimes or plans, for which prior voucher pays.
Clients can switch at will, though co-liability partners must switch together.
Maybe first-to-file bounty hunter can prosecute first, or first to have bet market estimate good chance to win.
Courts would remain skeptical of both sides’ evidence, and faking evidence is a big crime.
Bounty-hunters access to evidence varies with contract-specified client privacy levels.
Bet market estimates of fines given privacy levels set extra fine factors paid by clients with high levels.
As immigrants & tourists must be vouched, it matters less if immigrants cause more crime.
Parents must get vouchers for kids, so “majority” age could be when kids can choose them on own.
Could combine this with poverty or employment insurers, or career agents.
Maybe solemn voucher signing ceremony, after pass test shows that understand contract.
Added: See also this talk video, this two part video, and this TEDx video.
But by framing it that way you are making an implicit assumption about baseline rights that is at least as dubious and controversial as any common stance on redistribution. Namely, that people do not have any inherent preexisting moral right not to be enslaved for mere failure to pay an insurance premium, and that forbearing to enslave such people constitutes "feeling sorry for them." This is to put it mildly not a neutral stance.
As I read this, your voucher negotiates your rights to privacy and against self-incrimination, essentially setting your due process burden. It appears you expect them to charge a higher premium for a higher due process burden, but that is counter to their interests. If it's harder to convict you, your voucher faces less risk of financial loss. Similarly, the privacy component seems to be between you and the voucher - e.g. you pay less if they can read your emails. Again, this seems counter to their interests - assuming they can be compelled by a bounty hunter to disgorge evidence against you, they can lower their risk by not collecting that evidence in the first place. It's in their interest to see/hear no evil. Corporations have document destruction policies limiting the retention period for documents for this very reason.
Auto insurance offers discounts for those who allow the insurer to electronically monitor their driving habits, but I'm pretty sure they can't be compelled to share that data with liability plaintiffs. If they could be so compelled, they'd likely analyze the data and delete it on the fly.
The voucher assumes the primary risk of loss in the face of your conviction - why would they charge you more for reducing the risk of said conviction? Seems like they would have a discount for clients who have their fingerprints removed. They have every reason to help you get away with a crime.
We have something similar to your bounty hunter concept already, in enforcement of things like the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are filing mills devoted to shaking down businesses for settlements and lawyer fees for frivolous ADA claims. Privatizing enforcement creates incentives for blackmail of the deep pocket miscreant, which lets him get away with it for a fee and then go victimize someone new. Not a great deterrence.
Someone compared this to the dystopia of The Purge - except that in this case getting away with it is tied not to the calendar, but to the perpetrator's wealth. It's a return to a system best described by Mel Brooks - "it's good to be the king" (or the rich.)
Our current system is based on our society's foundational proposition that all are held equal before the law - it appears your intent is to eliminate current shortfalls in realizomg this proposition by abandoning it. Your responses to commenters criticisms suggests that you're too intrigued by the intricacies of your construct to be bothered with the potential moral calculus or questions of justice and fairness, but the issues you seek to address don't exist in a vacuum devoid of those considerations. Unless you broaden your analysis, this just looks like the quaint musings of someone too far along the sprectrum to understand the realities of human society.