One interesting aspect of police body cams is that they actually showed how bad people behave in front of the police. The reason complaints fell is Internal Affairs plays back the recording to the complainant or their lawyer and it shows that they lied.
Do cams control police behavior? It can as the officers are aware they are being recorded. Repeatedly you can hear fellow officers warning each other to avoid improper conduct, especially when the person they are dealing with deserves a proper beating. 😂
Working in security, I have had multiple dealings with police, and have for the most part found them to behave very professionally in the face of persons who literally taunt them. Respect for authority seems to have almost completely disappeared from many segments of our society. They refuse to comply with lawful orders, then start screaming 'Why are you doing this to me?' or "Stop, stop!' when after almost a dozen warnings, they get tasered or forcibly restrained. As to the last sentence of your response, I have seen too many situations where you are all too right. Where an ounce of street justice would do what a ton of the courtroom-rehabilitation kind can't. And that reflects back on the contents of the main post as a whole. People aren't afraid that if they don't behave properly, something very unpleasant will happen to them.
Maybe it was because of the stuff about the replication crisis earlier in the essay, but to me the main takeaway from the linked meta-analysis was “don’t trust any body cam research, there are a bunch of variables the studies either can’t or don’t account for.”
Within the theme of the piece, mandatory body cams seem like something that could plausibly affect “wants” and not just “rules” at both the crock pot and lightning strike level too. It’s an actual intervention, not just a rule.
Enjoyed the entire post and its message regardless though. Behavior is dictated by incentives, and rules only work if they’re enforced in a way that changes the incentive proposition.
Good essay. I find it especially frustrating when I see people with the opposite problem: everyone has already changed their attitude/perspective, but they are *still* waiting for the decree from on high before they actually do anything different.
For example, several years ago students at my university were circulating a petition for more resources and organization for the computer science department. The extremely popular demands called for things like department study sessions. Why wait for "the department" to host a study session, you ARE the department! You already accomplished the hard part! Host the study session!
Another example: a co-worker was complaining about how annoying parking was. He only lived 3 miles from the office in a very bikeable area -- why didn't he just bike in? Well because "the incentives" were not good enough to induce him to bike. What about the annoyance of traffic and the health benefits of biking? Why are you waiting for someone above you to mandate that you do it?
It's like we are so obsessed with top-down solutions to our problems that even when all the pieces are in place for a bottom-up solution we can only muster that strength for the purpose of demanding a top-down approach.
A wise and important essay. Beautifully crafted, too. But why not mention the crockpot of all crockpots: seventeen years in a home where parents live good values?
Not at all, I ask this because the essay can not finish the thought for itself - and clearly many of the commenters cannot either. Lots of thoughts about "good values" in the abstract sense as though they just arise from nowhere. A society that has departed from God will do this a lot for the next generation.
I would guess Mastroianni didn't include that because essays are more convincing when none of their examples are politically charged.
(Yes, that means the essay would be better without the "bad cops" example. I see that as a feature, not bug, given the reactions here in the comment section.)
I know it’s popular lately to rag on authoritative/gentle parenting but the problem you’re describing is one of the most fundamental motivations for using it rather than traditional punish/reward approaches: you can’t really punish or shame adults into doing the right thing. Even if you can usually punish or shame children to achieve desired behavior (due to the much bigger power differential), the point of parenting is not to get obedient children but to raise adults with integrity.
"One meta-analysis found a moderate drop in citizen complaints, but didn’t find any difference on any other outcomes: use of force, assaults against police officers, number of incident reports, etc."
If for the vast majority of events that would typically generate a citizen's complaint the officers act appropriately and thus the same with or without body cameras, we should expect only a small effect of the introduction of body cameras. If 5% of police actions in conflicts/arrests were inappropriate and the introduction of BCs cuts that to 2.5%, the resulting "small" 2.5% absolute reduction in complaints might seem negligible to someone assuming most complaints are justified, but the 50% relative reduction in police bad behavior would be a huge success. Of course, determining the true rate is highly subjective, but the implication that BCs have questionable value is overstated.
Bingo. If in fact the bad actions are committed by a relatively small number of departments, and only some of the cops in those departments, and even they aren't committing crimes all the time, you'd expect these results.
From a clinical seat, this maps almost too cleanly.
Medicine has spent much of the last twenty years trying to formalize good clinical reasoning into existence. We have guidelines, decision-support algorithms, electronic checklists, mandatory time-outs, audit dashboards. The results often resemble your body-cam example: small effects on the most measurable behaviors, weaker effects on the harder things that actually shape judgment, and a quiet flourishing of workarounds.
The reason, I think, is exactly the crock pot. Clinicians are not formed primarily by lectures or guidelines. They are formed by spending formative years watching senior physicians work, and absorbing what those physicians actually care about. If the consultants around you treat uncertainty as something to be confessed and worked through, you become a clinician who can tolerate uncertainty. If they treat it as a personal failure to be masked with confident gesture, you become the kind of doctor who reaches for premature certainty for the rest of your career, and no checklist will catch it, because you do not experience it as cheating. You experience it as competence.
The Feynman quote applies almost word for word to clinical training. The most important thing a doctor learns is when not to trust their own first impression. That lesson is rarely on a curriculum. It either gets absorbed in the right crock pot, or it never gets absorbed at all.
The uncomfortable corollary is that many attempts to “improve clinical reasoning” through regulation are addressing the wrong variable. The variable that matters is which senior clinicians are allowed to shape the next generation, and what they themselves were taught to care about.
Great piece, as usual. But I think you underestimate the force of rules. On the campus where I work, some years ago, we decreed that it would be 'tobacco free' and we banned smoking, vaping, etc. We put up signs. But there was no enforcement, no authority punished anyone who did smoke. Neverless, the ban worked well. Not perfectly, some continued, but fewer people smoked. Fewer times to dodge fumes and fewer butts littering the ground. I think the existence of the rule mattered. Rules about things like posting data differ because while smoking is pretty clearly dangerous posting data (for most papers) is pretty clearly a waste of time. How many times are those 'you have to post the data' data files downloaded? Probably zero. (clinical studies where there are $$$ and lives at stake might differ).
the fact that they obeyed a sign displaying a rule no one enforced says a lot about the crock-pot those students were stewed in -- one that's steeped in rule-following gentility. i come from a culture where everyone smokes and litters and doesn't give a damn about signs, making me the odd one out when i go looking for an inevitably overflowing trash can to receive my tiny garbage when the street i'm walking on is mostly filth. a lot of the world is more like the latter than the former, so adam's point stands, i think.
This is why, though I am not religious as an adult, I am grateful for having been raised in the church and learning deeply the values that make up a good society: honesty, work ethic, respect and care for others, duty, responsibility, truth and liberty.
You hit the nail on the head. The truth of your insights are all around us. Consider any system that creates rules to prevent something, and you’ll see how people find ways to get around them. Religious rules come to mind especially.
If the measure of a good essay is to reveal, illuminate, examine, provoke, inspire, amaze and/or just to delight ... you've nailed it with this one. Thank you.
Nice article. A minor, minor point, but the 3/5 compromise was advantageous to slaves/those against slavery. Slavery in the constitution was bad—having slave holding states receive fewer delegates by not fully counting slaves (who couldn’t vote) was good. The slave states wanted their slaves to count fully.
I dunno. The author of that thought it was wrong yet went forward with it for the sake of a union of all the states - and we're still suffering from it.
I think your conclusion is right, but the argument less so.
If the ⅗ths compromise failed, then, yes, the alternative wasn't the non-slave states steamrolling their opposition. But neither was it the slave states steamrolling their opposition! It was a collapse of the Convention and the dissolution of the Confederation into individual states.
Still, that collapse better resembles the slave states getting their way than the reverse. An independent Georgia (etc.) would likely have maintained slavery long past 1863. An independent Pennsylvania would be unlikely to invade them and free the slaves in the 1860s, just as the US never considered invading Brazil between 1863 and 1888.
One interesting aspect of police body cams is that they actually showed how bad people behave in front of the police. The reason complaints fell is Internal Affairs plays back the recording to the complainant or their lawyer and it shows that they lied.
Do cams control police behavior? It can as the officers are aware they are being recorded. Repeatedly you can hear fellow officers warning each other to avoid improper conduct, especially when the person they are dealing with deserves a proper beating. 😂
Working in security, I have had multiple dealings with police, and have for the most part found them to behave very professionally in the face of persons who literally taunt them. Respect for authority seems to have almost completely disappeared from many segments of our society. They refuse to comply with lawful orders, then start screaming 'Why are you doing this to me?' or "Stop, stop!' when after almost a dozen warnings, they get tasered or forcibly restrained. As to the last sentence of your response, I have seen too many situations where you are all too right. Where an ounce of street justice would do what a ton of the courtroom-rehabilitation kind can't. And that reflects back on the contents of the main post as a whole. People aren't afraid that if they don't behave properly, something very unpleasant will happen to them.
Maybe it was because of the stuff about the replication crisis earlier in the essay, but to me the main takeaway from the linked meta-analysis was “don’t trust any body cam research, there are a bunch of variables the studies either can’t or don’t account for.”
Within the theme of the piece, mandatory body cams seem like something that could plausibly affect “wants” and not just “rules” at both the crock pot and lightning strike level too. It’s an actual intervention, not just a rule.
Enjoyed the entire post and its message regardless though. Behavior is dictated by incentives, and rules only work if they’re enforced in a way that changes the incentive proposition.
Good essay. I find it especially frustrating when I see people with the opposite problem: everyone has already changed their attitude/perspective, but they are *still* waiting for the decree from on high before they actually do anything different.
For example, several years ago students at my university were circulating a petition for more resources and organization for the computer science department. The extremely popular demands called for things like department study sessions. Why wait for "the department" to host a study session, you ARE the department! You already accomplished the hard part! Host the study session!
Another example: a co-worker was complaining about how annoying parking was. He only lived 3 miles from the office in a very bikeable area -- why didn't he just bike in? Well because "the incentives" were not good enough to induce him to bike. What about the annoyance of traffic and the health benefits of biking? Why are you waiting for someone above you to mandate that you do it?
It's like we are so obsessed with top-down solutions to our problems that even when all the pieces are in place for a bottom-up solution we can only muster that strength for the purpose of demanding a top-down approach.
Dude, thank goodness for Mr L, because your writing is exactly what I needed right now.
A wise and important essay. Beautifully crafted, too. But why not mention the crockpot of all crockpots: seventeen years in a home where parents live good values?
How would you define those good values and how are we to know that they are objectively "good"?
Get a load of Mr. Postmodern over here.
Not at all, I ask this because the essay can not finish the thought for itself - and clearly many of the commenters cannot either. Lots of thoughts about "good values" in the abstract sense as though they just arise from nowhere. A society that has departed from God will do this a lot for the next generation.
Then make that last point rather than asking pomo questions. I had the same thought as FionnM.
I would guess Mastroianni didn't include that because essays are more convincing when none of their examples are politically charged.
(Yes, that means the essay would be better without the "bad cops" example. I see that as a feature, not bug, given the reactions here in the comment section.)
I know it’s popular lately to rag on authoritative/gentle parenting but the problem you’re describing is one of the most fundamental motivations for using it rather than traditional punish/reward approaches: you can’t really punish or shame adults into doing the right thing. Even if you can usually punish or shame children to achieve desired behavior (due to the much bigger power differential), the point of parenting is not to get obedient children but to raise adults with integrity.
Yeah.
"One meta-analysis found a moderate drop in citizen complaints, but didn’t find any difference on any other outcomes: use of force, assaults against police officers, number of incident reports, etc."
If for the vast majority of events that would typically generate a citizen's complaint the officers act appropriately and thus the same with or without body cameras, we should expect only a small effect of the introduction of body cameras. If 5% of police actions in conflicts/arrests were inappropriate and the introduction of BCs cuts that to 2.5%, the resulting "small" 2.5% absolute reduction in complaints might seem negligible to someone assuming most complaints are justified, but the 50% relative reduction in police bad behavior would be a huge success. Of course, determining the true rate is highly subjective, but the implication that BCs have questionable value is overstated.
Spot on. Found the BC supporting argument to be a reach given how fundamental of a change they are to all police interactions.
Bingo. If in fact the bad actions are committed by a relatively small number of departments, and only some of the cops in those departments, and even they aren't committing crimes all the time, you'd expect these results.
From a clinical seat, this maps almost too cleanly.
Medicine has spent much of the last twenty years trying to formalize good clinical reasoning into existence. We have guidelines, decision-support algorithms, electronic checklists, mandatory time-outs, audit dashboards. The results often resemble your body-cam example: small effects on the most measurable behaviors, weaker effects on the harder things that actually shape judgment, and a quiet flourishing of workarounds.
The reason, I think, is exactly the crock pot. Clinicians are not formed primarily by lectures or guidelines. They are formed by spending formative years watching senior physicians work, and absorbing what those physicians actually care about. If the consultants around you treat uncertainty as something to be confessed and worked through, you become a clinician who can tolerate uncertainty. If they treat it as a personal failure to be masked with confident gesture, you become the kind of doctor who reaches for premature certainty for the rest of your career, and no checklist will catch it, because you do not experience it as cheating. You experience it as competence.
The Feynman quote applies almost word for word to clinical training. The most important thing a doctor learns is when not to trust their own first impression. That lesson is rarely on a curriculum. It either gets absorbed in the right crock pot, or it never gets absorbed at all.
The uncomfortable corollary is that many attempts to “improve clinical reasoning” through regulation are addressing the wrong variable. The variable that matters is which senior clinicians are allowed to shape the next generation, and what they themselves were taught to care about.
Great piece, as usual. But I think you underestimate the force of rules. On the campus where I work, some years ago, we decreed that it would be 'tobacco free' and we banned smoking, vaping, etc. We put up signs. But there was no enforcement, no authority punished anyone who did smoke. Neverless, the ban worked well. Not perfectly, some continued, but fewer people smoked. Fewer times to dodge fumes and fewer butts littering the ground. I think the existence of the rule mattered. Rules about things like posting data differ because while smoking is pretty clearly dangerous posting data (for most papers) is pretty clearly a waste of time. How many times are those 'you have to post the data' data files downloaded? Probably zero. (clinical studies where there are $$$ and lives at stake might differ).
the fact that they obeyed a sign displaying a rule no one enforced says a lot about the crock-pot those students were stewed in -- one that's steeped in rule-following gentility. i come from a culture where everyone smokes and litters and doesn't give a damn about signs, making me the odd one out when i go looking for an inevitably overflowing trash can to receive my tiny garbage when the street i'm walking on is mostly filth. a lot of the world is more like the latter than the former, so adam's point stands, i think.
Many thanks to Mr. L for this terrific piece of writing.
This is why, though I am not religious as an adult, I am grateful for having been raised in the church and learning deeply the values that make up a good society: honesty, work ethic, respect and care for others, duty, responsibility, truth and liberty.
You hit the nail on the head. The truth of your insights are all around us. Consider any system that creates rules to prevent something, and you’ll see how people find ways to get around them. Religious rules come to mind especially.
If the measure of a good essay is to reveal, illuminate, examine, provoke, inspire, amaze and/or just to delight ... you've nailed it with this one. Thank you.
This is the best post I have ever read on Substack.
For the record, I'd like to report that I've successfully replicted this paper from 1974:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1311998/
Totally sincerely: your pieces are just brimming with insight. Bravo.
Nice article. A minor, minor point, but the 3/5 compromise was advantageous to slaves/those against slavery. Slavery in the constitution was bad—having slave holding states receive fewer delegates by not fully counting slaves (who couldn’t vote) was good. The slave states wanted their slaves to count fully.
I dunno. The author of that thought it was wrong yet went forward with it for the sake of a union of all the states - and we're still suffering from it.
I think your conclusion is right, but the argument less so.
If the ⅗ths compromise failed, then, yes, the alternative wasn't the non-slave states steamrolling their opposition. But neither was it the slave states steamrolling their opposition! It was a collapse of the Convention and the dissolution of the Confederation into individual states.
Still, that collapse better resembles the slave states getting their way than the reverse. An independent Georgia (etc.) would likely have maintained slavery long past 1863. An independent Pennsylvania would be unlikely to invade them and free the slaves in the 1860s, just as the US never considered invading Brazil between 1863 and 1888.