Far be it from me to to tell anyone how to think, or what a word belonging to everyone really means. But I’m going to quickly indulge in a No True Scotsman-ism. Libertarianism means being skeptical of power. (I recently saw a great line on libertarians that needs sharing: “…every libertarian agrees on two things: that there’s only one libertarian and it’s them.”)

So I’m optimistic to see reductions in the amount of power government agents can exercise. I’m particularly optimistic to see changes that don’t take the form of “we’re going to manage that bit of power over there with a new bit of power over here” (i.e. regulation). A very short term version of such a change happened when Buffalo’s police union announced they wouldn’t cover the legal fees of their riot squad.

My enthusiasm was followed by the right question in the comments: “If this obtains, what is the likely effect upon the lives and property of Buffalo dwellers?”

In principle, we could dig into this question empirically, but not until we’ve got decent data with variation in the liability rules governing police behaviors. In the mean time…

Let’s break the question down: What are the average effects and how will those effects differ between different parts of Buffalo? What will be the effects on violent crime? What will be the effects on property crime? And how will those effects affect property values?

The most obvious and immediate change will be a reduction in police use of force. As we’ve seen, at least some of that force is used criminally. This change in the rules means reducing the likelihood of another Gugino incident. Which means a reduced likelihood of pulling resources away from productive uses to cover all the various costs involved in such incidents–the medical care and suffering, the resources surrounding arresting the perpetrators and keeping them safe should they end up incarcerated, the legal fees, etc. All else equal (i.e. ignoring secondary effects), this is equivalent to raising the cost of breaking windows–bad for the glazier, but more than offset to window owners.

Of course, the real question is about the impact of reducing the non-criminal use of force by police. The Buffalo experiment looks to be short-term and restricted to the riot squad, so we won’t be able to draw any conclusions from this (except, of course, that it confirms my priors and you’re looking at things the wrong way if you disagree with me. </s>)

The more interesting question is how extending this liability issue–i.e. curtailing qualified immunity–would affect the long run equilibrium? That outcome would eventually be capitalized into the prices of real estate. Safer neighborhoods will have higher property values.

Here’s my prediction: property values will increase in poor and non-white neighborhoods relative to wealthier and whiter neighborhoods.

Some caveats are in order:

• I suspect that in most American cities poor neighborhoods are under-served by the police, so reduced legitimate police force will have minimal impact.
• I also suspect (hopefully someone will share some helpful resources in the comments) that illegitimate police force is mostly concentrated in poor neighborhoods.
• Wealthy neighborhoods might see some increased crime from reduced legitimate police force, but I’m doubtful. I think more likely the impact will be more like the effects of price discrimination–why pay more if the alternative isn’t terrible? To the extent poor neighborhoods get less terrible, the relative draw of rich neighborhoods will decreases.
• There are any number of other changes coming down the pipeline that will make it difficult to disentangle the effects of qualified immunity holding all else equal.
• To the extent we see a general improvement in the quality of policing (more ‘serve & protect’ and less cracking skulls) we should see an increase in property values across the board.
• White flight is likely to happen which will bias results towards my conclusions. I want my hypothesis to be interpreted holding white flight constant.
• The effects will go beyond just real estate price. I would expect something like this: for every $1 price reduction in rich neighborhoods, there will be <$1 price increase in poor neighborhoods, but the gap will be made up in other quality-of-life changes such as reduced chance of incarceration for victimless crimes, fewer hours of work missed, fewer injuries at the hands of police, etc.
• I hope that these quality of life changes will make empirical analysis even more difficult as other follow on effects extend the time horizon of people in poor neighborhoods–e.g. if fewer people are sent to jail, that could lead to fewer young men getting involved in crime leading to entrepreneurs being more willing to invest in their communities.

My predictions are absolutely shaded by my ideological biases. And there’s no getting around how complicated these changes are (hopefully) going to be. But I feel confident predicting an implicit shift of wealth from the paranoid wealthy to the disenfranchised.

Is there anyone here who disagrees enough to help me clarify my thinking by putting money on it?