Monopoly Police and Courts as Profit Centers in Ferguson

The complete 105-page Justice Department report titled “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department” and dated March 4, 2015 is here. This report does not examine or investigate Darren Wilson (see footnote 17 on p. 29). It examines the practices of the Ferguson Police Department and the Ferguson Municipal Court. For one article with damning extracts from the report, see here.

The report finds that both the police and municipal court in Ferguson exploit the Ferguson population. One motive is money (revenue). Both the police and court are, within limits, monopolies within their territorial domain. They use this monopoly to exploit the citizens whom they are supposed to protect. There are any number of laws and ordinances that can be rigidly invoked in order to bring charges and generate revenue.

A resident of Ferguson must move elsewhere to avoid being exploited. One expects the police and court to exploit more greatly that part of the citizenry who find it costly to move elsewhere, those who can’t defend themselves with lawyers or knowledge of the system, and those who do not or cannot use the political system to rein in the criminal activities of the police and court. These factors are associated with race. They show up in the disparate racial impact noted in this report. In my opinion, police who have the upper hand over black citizens also will develop, if they do not already have, a tendency to become racist, showing contempt for those whom they are exploiting, having crude racial attitudes and showing greater cruelty to black citizens.

This report unknowingly shows the consequence of monopoly policing and monopoly courts: exploitation by those supposed to provide the services. This same destructive incentive occurs throughout all such services provided by police, courts and government in general. Merely charging those in positions of power with upholding their oaths or serving the public does not avoid the bad consequences of giving them a powerful monopoly and especially when that power is directly connected to the laws that they make or enforce. Either such a monopoly over laws and their enforcement is eliminated in favor of non-territorial market competition; or else competition is on the basis of people moving from one community and jurisdiction to another; or else the people in a community have to participate directly or much more intensively in their government and oversee the activities of the police and courts.

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