by Mises Institute
Mises.org
With last week’s headlines driving national attention to the issue of policing in America, the Mises Wire had several articles focused on the underlying issues plaguing public law enforcement and how the market is the best means for solving them. A leading problem is that there are simply too many laws to begin with, increasing the amount of interactions with police and escalating the potential for confrontation. The approach of “Broken Windows” policing, calls for police to aggressively enforce minor law violations has no benefit outside of protecting heavy-handing enforcement. Further, the fact that public police are a “free” service, inevitably leads to them being called in for matters outside the scope of maintaining order.
The solution to all of this, of course, is to allow the market — not government — to provide for protection services. While this may seem extreme to some, private policing is actually a fairly common occurrence in America today.