Fegley Tate, Murtazashvili Ilia
Montreat College, 310 Gaither Circle, Montreat, NC USA.
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, 3807 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA.
Public Choice. 2023 May 31:1-18. doi: 10.1007/s11127-023-01063-y.
Dozens of municipalities in the United States pledged to defund the police after Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, while he was in their custody. We first consider whether the municipalities that promised to defund the police actually did so. We find that they did not: municipalities that promised to defund the police temporarily reduced police budgets, only to later increase them beyond what they were previously. We then argue that two mechanisms-the electoral incentives of city politicians to provide jobs and services (what we call allocational politics) and the strength of police unions-explain why the predominant political equilibrium is one with protected police officers as a barrier to reform. We discuss several additional reforms suggested by public choice scholars interested in the problem of predatory policing.
在美国，明尼阿波利斯警察在羁押 unarmed 黑人男子乔治·弗洛伊德期间将其杀害后，数十个城市承诺削减警察经费。我们首先考虑那些承诺削减警察经费的城市是否真的这样做了。我们发现它们并没有：承诺削减警察经费的城市只是暂时削减了警察预算，随后又将其增加到超过之前的水平。然后我们认为，有两种机制——城市政客提供就业和服务的选举激励（我们称之为分配政治）以及警察工会的力量——解释了为什么主要的政治均衡是一种以保护警察为改革障碍的均衡。我们讨论了对掠夺性警务问题感兴趣的公共选择学者提出的其他几项改革建议。
