POLICING FOR PROFIT presents a startling, yet timely exposE demonstrating that some U.S. metropolitan police departments are more interested in running a business than being a presence on the streets "to protect and serve"--and they're getting away with it--measuring success by both ticket and arrest "productivity." But they are not alone! Such police department revenue-producing ventures can only be achieved in partnership with greedy courts and unscrupulous proprietary interests. To make matters worse, in Florida, state law actually incentivized "policing for profit." Beginning in 1999, police officers in municipalities must, by law, receive "extra" pension benefits if increasing auto insurance is paid in their community, a feat easily accomplished by writing more traffic tickets! The undeniable and compelling evidence put forward proves clandestine ticket and arrest quotas--as covertly practiced in cities such as Tampa, Florida--result in fraud, while creating a wealth transfer from the public to police, courts, state government, auto insurers, and private vendors for courts, jails and prisons. The remedy is public awareness and demand for improved accountability systems to prevent this fraudulent abuse within the so-called justice system. The story shines a light on policing for profit tactics, including ticket quotas, arrest quotas, kangaroo courts, how quotas can result in fraud, how proprietary interests profit from tickets and arrests, and the lack of external oversight of law enforcement agencies and courts, as illustrated in the federal court case Orban versus the City of Tampa.

Most states and the federal government have laws allowing police and prosecutors to seize and permanently keep Americans’ cash, cars, homes and other property suspected of being involved in a crime—without regard to the owners’ guilt or innocence. This is civil forfeiture, and it is rampant nationwide, with local, state and federal agencies using it to collectively forfeit billions of dollars each year. Many of these billions go directly to law enforcement, including the same police and prosecutors who seize and forfeit property. This third edition of Policing for Profit presents the largest collection of state and federal forfeiture data yet assembled and provides updated grades of state and federal civil forfeiture laws. Key findings include: - Many jurisdictions fail to provide a full accounting of forfeiture activity, so any estimate of forfeiture’s scope will undercount. Still, by any measure, forfeiture activity is extensive nationwide, sending billions of dollars to government coffers; - State and federal laws make forfeiture easy and profitable for law enforcement; - New research shows eliminating civil forfeiture does not decrease crime; - Federal equitable sharing creates a giant loophole; - Forfeiture isn’t targeting kingpins and ordinary people can’t fight back

This volume examines the role of private investigators, industrial security and other private policing, and addresses key problems of public accountability associated with commercial policing.

Criminal justice reform has fast become a popular issue. Two areas of concern regard the use of private prisons, correctional facilities owned an operated by private agencies as opposed to government entities, and the use of civil asset forfeiture by police. In each of these cases, the “profit motive” is often blamed for the shortcomings and problems associated with each of these elements of the criminal justice system. Using the tools of economics, we explain how the problems surrounding private prisons and civil asset forfeiture are not the result of private enterprise, but the result of the institutional structure of government and the perverse incentives created by the War on Drugs.

The police in America belong to the people -- not the other way around. Yet millions of Americans experience their cops as racist, brutal, and trigger-happy: an overly aggressive, militarized enemy of the people. For their part, today's officers feel they are under siege -- misunderstood, unfairly criticized, and scapegoated for society's ills. Is there a fix? Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper believes there is. Policing is in crisis. The last decade has witnessed a vast increase in police aggression, misconduct, and militarization, along with a corresponding reduction in transparency and accountability. It is not just noticeable in African American and other minority communities -- where there have been a series of high-profile tragedies -- but in towns and cities across the country. Racism -- from raw, individualized versions to insidious systemic examples -- appears to be on the rise in our police departments. Overall, our police officers have grown more and more alienated from the people they've been hired to serve. In To Protect and Serve, Stamper delivers a revolutionary new model for American law enforcement: the community-based police department. It calls for fundamental changes in the federal government's role in local policing as well as citizen participation in all aspects of police operations: policymaking, program development, crime fighting and service delivery, entry-level and ongoing education and training, oversight of police conduct, and -- especially relevant to today's challenges -- joint community-police crisis management. Nothing will ever change until the system itself is radically restructured, and here Stamper shows us how.

During the 25 years of its existence, the War on Drugs has transformed the criminal justice system, to the point where the imperatives of drug law enforcement now drive law enforcement and corrections policies in counterproductive ways. One significant impetus for this transformation has been the enactment of forfeiture laws which allow law enforcement agencies to keep the lion's share of the drug-related assets they seize. This financial incentive has left many law enforcement agencies dependent on drug law enforcement to meet their budgetary requirements. In this article we present a legal and empirical analysis of these laws and their consequences. The empirical data show that the corruption of law enforcement priorities and wholesale miscarriages of justice can be attributed to the operation of these incentives, and also help explain why the drug war continues with such heavy emphasis on law enforcement and incarceration. The legal analysis questions the constitutionality of the forfeiture funding scheme under the due process clause, the appropriations clause, and the separation of powers.