Carol Chambers, a District Attorney in Colorado, has started paying performance bonuses to her prosecutors.
Should a government official, whose job it is to prosecute alleged criminals, be given a bonus for getting convictions?
My first thought is no, but it is based on my view of how the court system works. And that is to say the job of the prosecutor is not to get a conviction, but to present the facts. If the jury doesn’t rule in the favor of the prosecutor it likely means that person didn’t commit the crime. The prosecutor should have no incentive to get a conviction, but every incentive to be fair.
But I don’t know how the legal system works. I would assume that these days the prosecutor assumes the guy is guilty and presents only the facts that would say so. It’s the defense attorney’s job to disprove those facts and present their own. They would assume the person is guilty. I don’t really think that this system is the best, but it is probably how it works and I won’t pretend to be a legal scholar and suggest a better system.
So the prosecutors have an incentive to get convictions. Should they have a bonus for meeting a certain guideline? I still think not.
If you look at corporate incentives, they often give employees imperfect incentives to sometimes do the wrong thing (for example, selling a product to a customer that doesn’t need it). But, from a corporate perspective, the incentives are almost always tied to profitability (arguments about short term vs long term profitability notwithstanding).
But prosecutors don’t work for corporations. Their employer (the government) does not benefit financially from more convictions. And the citizens don’t really benefit if the prosecutors avoid a hard case to make sure they stay in the bonus bracket. So who really wins then?
Story via Cafe Hayek
Photo: Village Square
Note: The photo is actually from the Florida recount in the Bush/Gore elections. But, his stance and look paint the picture of a prosecutor.
 By The Weakonomist |
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