Palmyra paradox: Crime drops despite—or because of?—lost citation revenue

 

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Many Silicon Valley pols worry that excessive taxes can poison the goodwill between a city’s government and its people. Taxation-by-citation is no exception. Case study: one small police force took a big step back from ticketing—and property crime dropped by 80%. A Route Fifty commentary by James Small and Joanna Weiss.

The village of Palmyra, Wisconsin (where one of us has served as police chief since 2015) presents a stark contrast to this. This town of 1,700 people has shown how Brookside and other municipalities can end policing-for-profit — all while drastically lowering crime and improving public safety.

How did Palmyra pull off this feat? Its officers were directed to focus on behavior change and outcomes, rather than generating revenue.

Go Deeper:

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    • Since 2014, Palmyra has reduced ticket fines assessed from over $90,000 a year to under $30,000. Meanwhile, Palmyra’s property crime rate has decreased by over 80%.

    Turning law enforcement into armed debt collectors further erodes the trust between community and law enforcement. Nationally, a 1% increase in the share of revenues from fines, fees and forfeitures collected by municipalities is associated with a 6.1% decrease in the violent crime clearance rate.

    Taxation-by-citation isn’t just bad public safety policy, it’s also bad economic policy. Once all the government's costs of enforcement and collection are taken into account, policing-for-profit is hardly profitable at all.

    Read the whole thing here.

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    Jax OliverComment