Empowering the community to enforce the law would contribute to the development of a culture where the law actually functioned. Before there were police departments law enforcement was much more of a community matter and that approach, somewhat evolved for the modern world, is really the only viable way for the law to be enforced effectively.
As democracy is not just about elections, laws are not just legislation being passed, as laws only have effect to the degree that they are enforced. The problem with most laws is not what is written but the corresponding lack of action, not the talk but the walk.
While there are of course bad laws, more often the issue is the deliberate tactic by governments to undermine enforcement of laws against the powerful who coincidentally often funded their campaigns and will employ them when they leave `public service'.
Governments frequently do not want to be seen to change the laws to be watering down protections of citizens, are or actually are not able to change laws do so. They can however much less obviously and easily with executive power restrict and underfund the enforcement of laws that would protect people and the environment to the point they are rendered ineffective.
Laws that generally impact poor people tend to be enforced with vastly overfunded police departments resourced to overpolice, an expensive judicial system and mass incarceration. It is of course a system of one law for us, and no law for them.
Laws that generally would have an impact on the wealthy or limit corporations tend to have lax enforcement with hamstrung underfunded enforcement bodies a mechanisms to allow the wealthy and powerful to negotiate their way out. There are few cops on beats like financial regulation, tax audits, protecting workers' rights, or, environmental regulation.
Of course regulators alone or even primarily do not enforce laws. Rather a culture has to be developed where at the very least there is a widespread expectation of there being likely consequences to breaching the law that are a sufficient deterrent.
Laws have to be a bit fuzzy reflecting firstly the complexity of modern life and that no law can articulate every permutation. They also have to be able to reflect evolving community sentiment. Finally they have to operate so that the advantage is clearly in acting in good faith and avoiding transgression rather than a race to the bottom seeking loopholes or evading enforcement.
Any disadvantage should accrue to bad actors rather than good. If any significant proportion of the regulated can successfully avoid compliance it means either a privileged minority acting above the law entrenching their privilege or to compete everyone has an incentive to ignore the law. That is what we currently see with the regulation or corporations generally.
Of course to really function a law needs to operate so that it is accepted culturally, so people actively act to avoid transgression. Ideally of course the laws should reflect the values of the people governed by them so that they should want to comply, and indeed participate in ensuring compliance.
Government alone will never be able to enforce laws and regulations adequately as it simply cannot resource such an undertaking and such a concentration of power inevitably leads to abuses. Community support is required to create a culture where laws are complied with and a majority of transgressors face significant consequences, legal and otherwise.
Perhaps an important early step towards breaking down the status quo would be recognising that for many the most pressing under enforced areas of law there are already organisations and people interested in seeing laws enforced. Think unions and the issue of wage theft, or environmental NGOs and pollution or illegal tree clearing, or, consumer advocates detecting fraud by banks or other corporations.
If these groups and people could be recognised to have legal standing, rights and powers to allow them to participate in enforcing laws they would significantly increase the enforcement infrastructure for the relevant laws. Moreso if they were also able to fund themselves by collecting bounties for detecting violations of the law that are successfully prosecuted funded by financial penalties on transgressors this would make the system more sustainable.
Such a system where law enforcement is not monopolised by the political class would go a long way to creating a culture where laws that effect the powerful are actually enforced.
No comments:
Post a Comment