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Comment by antmldr | Hacker News Reader

IANAL, but in Commonwealth countries this seems to be mitigated by the use of consolidated revenue funds[0].

It's explicit in s81[1] and 83[2] of the Australian Constitution that all revenues must be deposited into the CRF and you then need a law to appropriate the revenue elsewhere. Similarly, state law seems to point to revenue from civil seizure is paid into treasury.[3]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Fund [1] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s... [2] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/s... [3] http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cara199027...

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I always feel like an asshole when I say this, but... Much of the constitution and guiding American legal principles (as much as they diverge from Common Law at the time) were built on distrust of The Crown. And since then they've managed to fuck it up spectacularly. Elected public prosecutors instead of something like the Crown Prosecution Service. Insane semi-militarised police instead of a force whose ethos continues to be "policing by consent" (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles). ANZAC and the UK are far from perfect, but there's a bitter irony that a country built to escape oppression from the state now feels it more keenly than the other countries born of that state.

Yes, this is the ultimate solution. Fines and forfeitures should never go to the local government responsible for crafting them, or worse, directly to the police department enforcing them.

Remove that incentive, and suddenly the darker motive goes away. The officials can no longer emotionally rationalize excessive fines, misplaced priorities on seizure rather than crime prevention, or even outright theft. The only thing that remains is a desire to actually do the job of protecting the public.

People seem to greatly undervalue the importance of aligning incentives with desired outcomes.

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