5 Comments
User's avatar
Joe Katz's avatar

Exactly. We don't need better training. We need meaningful consequences, and even tougher, meaningful consequences we're not relying on a member of this administration acting to enforce.

Hershey, Marjorie R.'s avatar

As Heather Cox Richardson has written, what happened in the concentration camps would not have been ameliorated by better training.

The AI Architect's avatar

Really sharp insight using that prisoner transport example. The incentive shift from boarding to arrival literally changed outcomes overnight. Same dynamic with policing, when departments are rewarded for volume and aggression rather than de-escalation and community safety, training becomes amost irrelevant. Bureaucratic structures optimize for what they measure.

Seth Masket's avatar

Thank you!

John Curiel's avatar

Though even with a change in incentives, there is institutional inertia when it comes to changing a culture. In the case of ICE, said culture is thoroughly corrupted (i.e. becoming more of a secret police force than anything). In such a case, something like the post-Soviet Georgian solution for corrupt police seems more appropriate.