The Latin phrase "Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes?" means "Who will guard the guards
themselves?" It may have originated with the Roman poet Juvenal, who
flourished around the first century A. D., but the problem it highlights is
much older than that. Those who
are charged with enforcing a law always experience a temptation to abuse the
power that enforcement confers.
The case in point here is the use—and abuse—of so-called red-light
cameras that photograph alleged runners of red lights and produce traffic
citations that are mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle in question.
By the 1990s, the technology
making these devices practical was sufficiently advanced that cities began
installing them. According to an
article in a recent issue of National
Review, over 500 cities in about half the states in the U. S. now use
them. Although the professed
reason for adopting red-light cameras is to reduce the number of red-light
runners, studies have shown that the evidence for lowering accident rates at
intersections with red-light cameras is mixed. Traffic engineers have noted a perverse counter-incentive at
intersections where drivers know a red-light camera is installed. Some drivers get so jumpy at seeing a
yellow light at a camera-equipped intersection that they jam on their brakes
prematurely and get rear-ended by a less paranoid driver behind them.
What is not in dispute is that
the red-light cameras are real moneymakers, both for the municipalities that
install them and for the companies that often install and operate them for the
government free of charge, taking a portion of the fine proceeds as
payment. The city of Newark, New
Jersey gets $4 million per year in revenue from red-light cameras, while
Chicago averages about $50 million a year. Chicago's city government does not have a reputation for
being squeaky-clean, so it is not surprising that earlier this month a man
named Martin O'Malley was convicted of giving a $2 million bribe to a city
transportation official. The money
came from Redflex Traffic Systems, which up to last year operated the city's
red-light cameras.
Redflex also offers a related
service to school-bus systems: a
stop-arm violation camera. In most
states, it is illegal to pass a stopped school bus while its red flashing
lights are on and the stop-arm is extended, but many people do it anyway. Redflex will install video cameras and
wireless downloading and evaluation systems free of charge on every school bus
in exchange for a percentage of the fines assessed for violations. This type of system has also proved
popular and has been installed on school buses across the country, including
right here in San Marcos, Texas.
The red-light and stop-arm
cameras can be viewed simply as technological aids to conventional means of law
enforcement. But they differ from
other security-camera systems such as those that catch convenience-store
robbers in one significant respect:
the absence of a police officer at the scene. If a live patrolman pulls you over for speeding, there is a
human-to-human interaction, and technically you can haul the officer into court
and subject him to cross-examination at trial. The fact that most people don't bother doesn't change the
principle. But when there is
nothing but photographic evidence for a violation, there is nobody to subpoena,
and correcting mistaken identifications and other errors can become a more
complex matter.
Besides the potential for error,
there is the temptation to shorten the duration of yellow lights to increase
revenue. City governments in
Florida and Illinois have been caught quietly lowering the duration of yellow
signals below the federal guideline of three seconds at red-light-camera-equipped
intersections, and in Florida things got so bad that the state legislature
passed a law prohibiting the practice.
Beyond the immediate temptation
to abuse the system in government's favor at the expense of private citizens,
there is the larger question of whether it is a good thing to use technology in
a way that incentivizes governments to enforce laws, not mainly because
enforcement benefits society as a whole, but because it generates revenue for
the government.
We have just experienced the
Christmas season. According to the
Gospels, Joseph and Mary, the mother of Jesus, had to travel from their home in
Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, to fill out some government tax
form. In ancient Rome and its colonies,
taxes were collected by private contractors called publicans. The deal was that publicans would bid
for the right to collect a specified amount of taxes in a given region. If you won the bid, it was up to you to
collect at least the amount of taxes you were assigned, and anything you
collected over your expenses and what Rome needed was yours to keep. The potential for abuse in such a
system is obvious, which may be why Jesus in later life used the hated figure
of a publican in a parable as an example of someone who would have plenty of
sins to ask forgiveness for.
Firms such as Redflex are not
exactly in the position of the publicans of ancient Rome, but the system under
which they operate is edging toward a publican-like tendency of open-ended
revenue collection that profits both the firm and the government it works for,
at the expense of the public at large.
The abuses of the publican system came to an end with the Roman republic
itself. I am not recommending such
a radical fix here. But we can
take the advice and examples of Juvenal and Jesus to give a hard look at
technological systems that create perverse revenue incentives that reward abuse
on the part of governments and firms that provide the technology.
Sources: John J. Miller's article "The
Red-Light District" appeared in the Dec. 31, 2014 print edition of National Review, pp. 24-26. I also referred to an article on
stop-arm cameras posted by a Fox News TV station in Washington, DC at
http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/23344373/2013/09/04/redflex-takes-aim-at-violators-of-school-bus-stop-arms,
and to the Wikipedia articles on Juvenal and "Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?"
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