What if the police would mail out a check to everyone who wasn't convicted or incarcerated in the last year? The money would come out of the police budgets to reward innocent people for being innocent. Whenever someone is convicted and / or incarcerated for a crime then just put that person's check into the new police operating budget (but only up to a certain point, anything above the maximum should go towards giving the innocent people more valuable checks).

It's not meant to be welfare for folks to live on, and it's not reparrations, it's just an incentive to remind people to avoid crime. Maybe even try to arrange the timing so that the checks get mailed out just before the holidays. And if anybody doesn't want a government handout for whatever reason then that's fine, they don't need to deposit their check, but if they stay out of trouble then it'll keep coming back every year just in case they ever do need it.

Here's how I would recommend calculating the citizen reward for staying out of trouble, as well as the new de-funded police budgets, it's really very simple:

IndividualInnocenceReward = OriginalLocalPoliceBudget / PopulationOfArea

NewDeFundedPoliceBudget = (IndividualInnocenceReward x ConvictionsLastYear) / Misconducts

Dividing the new de-funded budget by the total number of misconduct reports in the police department from that year will strongly incentivize the police chiefs as well as police unions to suspend or fire bad cops quickly so that they don't drag down the entire budget. And making the police accountable for each other's conduct should also enforce better behavior among police, they'll all want to make sure that none of their co-workers are making any mistakes because they would all pay for it.

And if the current police budgets aren't enough to pay every innocent person a decent sized incentive for being good and avoiding crime then maybe (just maybe, because I know this would be controversial) add social security, food stamps, and other welfare programs into the mix (which would ensure that social security and the other welfare program are never underfunded again). Then if someone is convicted they would just have to pledge a portion of their social security and / or food stamps benefits (the amount of the fine could be based on what kind of crime was committed, like serious and violent or political offenders might have to pay larger fines).

Or even better yet, instead of letting the police take money from people's welfare, just charge the convicted offenders a direct fine for their crime and put that money into the reward pool for the citizens who stay out of trouble (instead of giving the fine proceeds directly to the state). And maybe even work out an arrangement with local farmers and other businesses to hire non-violent inmates for out-of-jail work (preferably not around customers) during the day shifts to help pay off their fines.

It doesn't have to be farm work, it could be any kind of work. The whole point is just to help the offenders stay productive and employed while they're detained. Farm work isn't easy, but I mentioned it because it can teach people a lot of different work skills in a short amount of time as well as promoting a positive work-ethic. Also, farms are always looking for workers, and if they can't hire local people then they're sort of left with no alternative but to hire migrant workers which can sometimes put the farmer in a legal limbo of their own.

Updating our simple equations to include the fines would now look like this:

IndividualInnocenceReward = ( OriginalLocalPoliceBudget + Fines ) / PopulationOfArea

NewDeFundedPoliceBudget = (IndividualInnocenceReward x ConvictionsLastYear) / Misconducts

This way the local police budget will always be directly proportionate to the amount of crime in the area they serve, but offset by the number of misconducts committed by the officers in the department. Police jobs will naturally begin to migrate away from areas with less crime (and high misconduct) and go to where the money is (the police would be financially forced out of safe areas to relocate into the places where they may actually needed based on the real crime numbers, not racial bias or elitist opinions). My apologies to the families of police officers, you may be required to move to a new city occasionally.

And remember, the police can't convict people, they can only arrest people, the courts have to handle the convictions. So as long as you make sure there's a time-limit on convictions that count for the police budget (which would also go a long way towards reinforcing our constitutional right to a fast and fair trial) if the police ever tried to arrest extra people in an effort to get more convictions then it would only back-fire on them by backing up the local judicial system, and then the police would lose that part of their new budget if it takes too long to process the cases for that year.

So instead of just arresting every suspicious person, the police will be strongly incentivized to only arrest the offenders who they truly believe are very likely to be guilty; and the only way the police could "game the system" for more money is to just get better and more efficient at their jobs, not worse.

If you really believe in a community's power and god-given right to self-regulate then this would be a great way to prove it. If you already live in a safe area, or if you succeed in transforming your community into a safer place then this will reward you with fewer (if any) police in your community by effectively de-funding the local police department in a safe and gradual process. By incentivizing the innocent to stay out of trouble this makes de-funding the police an even more effective tool for enriching our society.

Totally safe areas that don't need any police at all would be completely taken off the lists of places that police can patrol or do surveillance in. And if the police absolutely have to go into a zero police zone to stop an ongoing emergency situation then they should have to do everything they can to keep their presence to a minimum, we can enforce that by making the officers who go into zero police zones have to pay extra (like a per-hour fine that would come directly out of their paychecks) to go towards the reward checks that get sent out to the citizens in those zones. The police won't stay any longer than an emergency requires because there's no money in it for them, especially if the police have to pay a fine just for being there. The trick to de-funding the police is to de-incentivize their money.

Society might also benefit by giving these rewards to minors as well, the younger people are when they learn that being good has good benefits then the deeper that lesson will remain engraved in their minds when they become adults. Maybe put the check's for minors into individual savings accounts for them that they can access once they're 18 years old (so that their parents can't just take their money, which would completely defeat the purpose of teaching children the lesson about rewarding good behavior).

In 5 years every teenager in the country will have become an adult. After another 5 years most 18 year olds in the country then would have difficulty remembering a time when they weren't getting paid to stay out of trouble. Some people say that the BlackLivesMatter plan to de-fund the police over the course of 5 years isn't enough time to get it done, but I believe that if we incentivize innocence by paying people (from out of the police budget) to stay out of trouble then it should act as a multiplier to the effect, and bring real lasting change sooner. After all, why not use the police budget to reward innocent people for staying out of trouble? It's a lot like taxing cigarette sales to help pay for cancer research. The two things are directly related, so why not take the preventative measures? Especially when it can benefit society so much.

Some people might laugh at this idea and say that there won't be any such thing as zero police zones because every town will always have at least some crime. But that's not really true, there are already some small rural towns in America that practically have no crime at all. I believe that with the proper motivation the entire country could potentially become a zero police zone some day (maybe not right away, but in the next few generations it could really get solidified into our culture).

There's a reason why people say "follow the money", because money in a society is like voltage in a circuit; power flows where it's placed, and power is placed by design. Money is the thing to watch because money is the thing that gets stuff done. It's been shown that the majority of crime is caused by poverty and desperation, so paying people to be good might be exactly what's needed. Don't just de-fund the police, please reward the innocent too, because then none of us will need the police.

The 3rd main factor that studies have shown to be a major contributor to crime statistics is a lack of access to a good education. Maybe those individual savings accounts for minors should have a percentage earmarked for higher education and / or private school tuition.

If the BlackLivesMatter Movement could lobby congress (or even just create enough political pressure) to enact legislation to that effect then everybody in America could de-fund their own local police just by not breaking the law and convincing their friends and neighbors to stay out of trouble too. It would give everybody a chance to show the police who we really are.

Even if the police do try to arrest you for bogus charges, if they can't convict you for actually having broken a law then you're just wasting their time (and money) by clogging the system, the easiest way to protest in that case would be to (well, first of all make sure that your lawyer knows your case inside and out, and knows exactly how to clear you, but aside from that) just sit back and let the police clog up their own system, that's just another way to de-fund them (easiest passive resistant protest ever).

It could take as little as 1 or 2 years to get the police out of your town if you're all peaceful and especially if your community organizes to self-regulate (things like creating a local neighborhood watch program, or setting up a group of volunteers to mediate issues and help resolve disputes over the phone before they turn into conflicts for someone else to handle in person, as well as setting up local charity drives for the poor are all great ways to get started organizing your community). The more organized your community is, the more tools you'll have for removing the police presence from your city, or at least de-funding them to a more realistic level.

That also means getting to know the people in your community, hosting meetings, making connections, posting flyers, knocking on doors, but most importantly talking to people and convincing at least some of them to take those extra steps as well; because you can't be a community just by yourself. It could be a lot of work to ween your community off of their dependence on the police, but giving people viable alternatives instead of leaving them desperate is the best start.

It might also be a good idea to set up a community response phone number that people in your area could call or text (maybe even email too) instead of or in addition to calling 911 for some situations (as long as you can find volunteers to answer the phones and really take the work seriously without screwing it up like some of the police did. Even if someone calls both the community response line and the police too, the community response could be to come and observe the police and record video evidence to make sure that the cops don't do anything wrong. In fact, that might be one of the most valuable services you could provide in some circumstances.

At first the police will probably just go somewhere else and sort of shuffle around for a while, but eventually we could really force there to be fewer and fewer police jobs just by the virtue of our own good graces. And eventually, there may come a day when policing is just another obsolete concept, relegated to the dust-bins of history, and replaced by thousands of better ideas.

Thank you for taking the time to read my little rant. I don't usually post often but I felt this was important to say, #BlackLivesMatter. Also, I'm aware that what I've described here could potentially be labeled by critics as "Redistribution Of Wealth" or maybe even "Communism". But honestly, I would be more worried about crime becoming so expensive that people can't escape the system once they get stuck in it, more than worrying about the idea of a mathematically distributed police budget causing people to vote for the communist party. I'm not trying to promote communism or any other political ideology at all, just expressing an idea that might be useful to society. And I do hope this helps.

Also, I'd like to say that I'm not really anti-police (in fact I like my local police, I think they're a lot friendlier than most of the other police I've encountered around the country). I really just like the idea of financially rewarding innocent people for staying out of trouble, because poverty is the biggest driver of crime in society. And making it the police who pays people for being good is a great way of introducing friendly cops to some of the people who are most nervous about them, even if they never have to meet in person, it would still build a better relationship between the police and the people.

And I wouldn't be surprised if some communities might even vote to make a move for more initial federal funding to their local police, but with a specific cap on the operating limit (so that the citizens can get higher innocence rewards while still controlling how much of the remaining budget the police are allowed to use). It would be up to the individual communities to decide things like that, I'm sure there would be a lot of local efforts to tweak things in one way or the other. But I think it would be really interesting to see how that sort of thing would unfold.

The police are feared and mistrusted because most people only know the downside of interacting with them. But when the police start paying people for being good instead of just arresting people for being bad then I think it will change the relationship that the police have with their local communities. It's not too late to rebuild confidence between the people and the police, even if it facilitates minimizing the police presence. I think more positive police interaction with the people would go a long way towards reducing crime as well as minimizing 'the need for the police' in this country.

And really, there is a chance that crime could become an expensive financial trap. If we don't want career criminals pushing the legal limits out of poverty-induced desperation then we're going to need to allow for a pathway back to innocence for the people who do fall into that trap for whatever reason. Maybe offer the convicted people loans to start up their lives again when they get out of jail (up to a certain amount of course). But even then, that's a little bit like replacing one trap with another trap... I've got it, we could offer criminals political jobs to pay off their debts. Lol, okay, I'll stop now. But somebody really should try to think of a way to solve that one issue. Any ideas? Feel free to leave a shout out in the comments, thanks!

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