Dog has his day
Economists and bounty hunters would appear to have little in common. Duane "Dog" Chapman is a tattooed ex-convict with his own reality television show, currently threatened with extradition to Mexico for apprehending a US rapist there. Alex Tabarrok wears Gap khaki shorts and is interested in tort reform. Only one of them is an economist.
Nevertheless, there is an unlikely alliance here. Professor Tabarrok and his colleague Eric Helland have been sounding the charge for bounty hunters such as "Dog" - as well as the more traditional kind, who catch fugitives by sweet-talking their mothers or waiting patiently across the street from their girlfriends' houses. Economists are taking an interest because the bounty hunters are an unusual example of performance-based pay.
ADVERTISEMENT
A tough question for any legal system is whether suspects should be imprisoned while awaiting trial. Let them out and they may abscond or show up at the mall with a machinegun. Keep them in and you are incarcerating someone who has not been convicted of any crime. There is no easy answer, but an economist's instinct would be that if you pay judges to get the answer right, they will.
Steven Landsburg, an economist at the University of Rochester, has suggested one way of doing that. A judge would get a fat bonus for every suspect he released, and a stiff financial penalty if the suspect machinegunned anyone. The fatter the bonus, the more the judge will want to risk releasing subjects, and the more the system will favour liberty over public safety. Whether the bonus is small or large, however, the judge has a strong financial incentive to think carefully about which suspects are worth the risk to society - and his bank account.
But what Professor Landsburg may not have realised is that his wacky-sounding idea is already used in most states in America, albeit in a disguised form. Instead of putting the judges on an incentive system, those states have replaced the difficult part of their job with a private judiciary - bail dealers, who have almost exactly the incentives Landsburg advocates.
Under the current system, many suspects are offered bail, which should partly resolve the dilemma between liberty and public safety by allowing a suspect his freedom while giving him a strong reason to return and stand trial. The problem, of course, is that many suspected criminals do not have enough cash to pay for meaningful bail.
This is where bail dealers come in. The bail dealer posts the entire bail bond and takes a 10 per cent fee from the suspect or his loved ones. As long as the suspect shows up in court, the bail dealer gets her bond back and keeps the fee for her trouble (or his trouble - but bail dealers are often women). If the suspect doesn't show up the dealer hires a bounty hunter to go and fetch him. The bail dealer makes money only if she hardly ever makes the wrong call.
The system is therefore a natural test of whether this sort of unlikely performance pay works. Tabarrok and Helland studied the matter (research methods included data-crunching but also dawn raids around Baltimore), comparing thousands of pairs of suspects with similar backgrounds accused of the same crime.
Those who go through the bail-bond system are more likely to show up in court and more likely to be caught by the likes of "Dog" Chapman if they abscond. Overall they are three times less likely to be successful fugitives, even given the fact that official judges get "first pick" of those who are imprisoned.
What's next? "Dog" found success after spending time in prison for murder; he calls himself "what rehabilitation stands for". So why not introduce performance pay for private rehabilitation specialists too?
赏金猎人的“绩效薪酬”
经
济学家和赏金猎人(bounty hunter)之间似乎没有什么共同点。绰号“猎犬”的杜安?查普曼(Duane “Dog” Chapman)有纹身，曾服过刑，拥有自己的电视真人秀节目。他在墨西哥逮住一个美国强奸犯，因而自己现在面临被引渡至墨西哥的威胁。亚历克斯?塔巴罗克(Alex Tabarrok)穿着一条Gap卡其布短裤，他对民事侵权法改革很感兴趣。在他们两人中，只有一个是经济学家。
然而，这里存在一种不可思议的联系。塔巴罗克教授以及他的同事埃里克?赫兰(Eric Helland)在提醒人们关注“猎犬”以及更为传统的赏金猎人。他们通过用甜言蜜语哄骗逃亡者的母亲，或耐心守在逃亡者女友家的街对面，来抓捕这些逃亡者。经济学家之所以感兴趣，是因为赏金猎人提供了不同寻常的“绩效薪酬”案例。
在任何法律体系中，都有一个非常棘手的问题：疑犯在候审期间是否应被关进监狱。放掉他们，他们或许会潜逃，或端着机关枪闯进商场。把他们关起来，就是把一个尚未被定罪的人关进监狱。这个问题没有简单的答案，但经济学家本能地认为，若用经济手段激励法官恰当处理，他们就能做到。
罗彻斯特大学(University of Rochester)经济学家斯蒂文?兰德博格(Steven Landsburg)提出了一种解决方法。法官每释放一名疑犯，都将获得一笔丰厚的奖金，但如果疑犯用机关枪向任何人开火，该法官将被处以高额罚款。奖金越丰厚，法官就越希望冒险释放疑犯，司法系统对个人自由的支持，就越胜过公共安全。然而，无论奖金多少，法官都会拥有强烈的财务动机，去仔细思考哪位疑犯值得他用社会安全以及自己的银行账户去冒险。
但兰德博格教授或许没有意识到，他那听上去很古怪的主意，已在美国大多数州获得应用，只是以另一种形式出现。那些州并没有为法官制定一种激励机制，而是把他们工作中最为困难的部分交由“私人司法系统”代劳。这就是保释金经纪人(bail dealer)，其激励机制与兰德博格所提倡的几乎完全一样。
根据目前的体系，许多嫌疑人被要求交纳保释金，这种做法使嫌疑人在享受自由的同时，又有回来接受审判的强烈动机，从而能在一定程度上解决个人自由与公共安全之间的权衡难题。问题是，许多嫌疑人没有足够现金来支付金额具有激励意义的保释金。
这就是保释金经纪人的存在理由。保释金经纪人为嫌疑人交纳全部保释金，并从嫌疑人或其亲属处收取10%的费用。只要嫌疑人按时在法庭出现，保释金经纪人就可以收回其保释金，并保留其收取的费用，作为她（或他――保释金经纪人多为女性）的报酬。如果嫌疑人没有到庭，那么保释金经纪人会聘请赏金猎人去追捕。保释金经纪人只有在判断很少出错的情况下，才能赚到钱。
因此，该体系是一种天然的测试，可以判断这类不可思议的“绩效薪酬”是否有效。塔巴罗克和赫兰对该问题进行研究（研究方法不仅包括数据分析，还包括在巴尔的摩周围清晨实地调查），就数千对有类似背景、被控相同罪名的嫌疑人进行比对。
那些通过这种保释金体系而得到释放的嫌疑人，出庭的可能性更大，如果他们弃保潜逃的话，也更可能被“猎犬”查普曼这样的赏金猎人抓获。总体而言，他们成为成功逃亡者的可能性会降低三分之二，即便法官总会“先选定”哪些嫌疑人必须关押起来。
接下来会怎样？曾因谋杀罪而入狱的“猎犬”查普曼找到了成功；他自称为“洗心革面重新做人的代表”。下一步，何不为“私人改造专家”引进绩效薪酬？
