Law Enforcement: Intervention Points

Stable nations are capable of great kindness and destabilizing them is almost never more kind than leaving them alone.

The enforcement of national law is an integral aspect of the stability of a nation, both because people who are not protected from crime are more likely to revolt and because people who are not prevented from enacting regime change are more likely to do so. Sometimes, it is kind to allow people to break a law; intervention would cause more harm than it would prevent. Other times, a victim can defend themself, or a bystander can step in. Occasionally, a law-breaker will submit to intervention voluntarily, enforcing in retrospect the law they broke. However, there are cases where the government itself should proactively attempt to stop law-breakers.

The first is, if a person requests that the government intervene in a suspected crime in progress against them. The government acts to prevent this person from organizing their own police patrol; therefore the government owes this person reasonable access to the government's police patrol.

The second is, if a crime has already been committed. The government acts to prevent vigilantism; therefore the government must take responsibility for following up on criminal events.

The third is, if a crime is being committed at a scale such that individuals cannot control the situation. Effectively opposing an organization requires an organization, and for efficiency and stability the intervening organization should be governmental.

The fourth is, if a guardian is suspected of committing a crime against their ward. Guardians are responsible for either taking care of their wards or transferring that duty to someone who can and will discharge it; accordingly, a guardian who is provably abusing their ward should have the transfer done for them. (The central example of a guardian-ward relationship is parents to their minor children.)

In these cases, a government tasking its agents with going out into the world and enforcing national law can be a kindness, and the agents’ obedience a parallel kindness. These cases still aren't always improved by intervention, and there are other cases that can be improved by intervention. But these, I believe, are some of the safer bets, to a government trying to be kind and unsure as to which crimes to react to.

Law Enforcement: After a Crime

Government follow-up on criminal activity should involve uncovering and spreading verifiable information on the details of the crime, protecting and supporting any victims, and addressing the crime with the criminal, if a criminal can be identified. Interaction with the criminal should not take the form of punishment, as hurting people for the sake of those people being hurt is not kind. Rather, such interaction should be directed to other ends, including:

• Discouragement of the commission of crime for benefit, such as requiring the return of stolen property.
• Prevention of recidivism from a position of power, such as barring a medical practitioner convicted of fraud from practice for a period of time.
• Limited longer-term monitoring, such as mandatory meetings with a parole official.
• Opportunities to develop alternatives to criminal activity, such as an opt-out assignment to group counseling for anger management.

Criminals should under no circumstances be subjected to torture or other inhumane treatment. Nonconsensual restrictions on former criminals should be proportionate to the significance of the crime, limited in scope to affect only potentially criminal actions, and respectful of human dignity.

Theory of Governance

A nation is a territory within which a body of law applies. A stable nation must delegate to its agents the power to maintain its territory and enforce its law. Nations that do not maintain their territory tend to be annexed by other nations; nations that do not enforce their law tend to be replaced from within. National instability is therefore usually a temporary condition, but periods of it can still cause harm to subjects of the nation.

"Territory" here means the area which the nation in fact controls. A government in exile does not have territory and is therefore not a nation until it returns or gains territory elsewhere. Areas where people can live are controlled by one nation or another almost without exception.

"Law," similarly, means the law which the nation in fact makes apply. A so-called law that the officials of a government do nothing to enforce is merely a piece of paper. Conversely, a policy that the nation does actual work to enact is effectively law regardless of its origin. A nation's law may be totally unrelated to its written legal code, or have very little overlap.

A "subject" of a nation is a person whom the nation is capable of acting upon. This includes residents, passers-through, and legal citizens living or traveling abroad. This also includes people in territories that the nation is seriously contesting, anyone whom the nation has imprisoned for any reason, and anyone who is liable to be extradited to the nation. Nations have certain natural responsibilities toward their subjects.

An "agent" of a nation is a person through whom the nation acts. As a rule of thumb, if someone could say that the government did this or that, but the material components of the action were completed by people acting as authorized by national law, those people are agents of the nation. Agents operate by the sufferance of the nation and an agent who breaks the law is likely to lose their license.

To a significant extent, these concepts as they are actually enacted do line up with national documents. However, changing the document does not necessarily change the reality. It's more common for documents to describe the workings of a nation than for the workings of the nation to exist as an expression of particular documents.