Wenn Menschen bezahlt werden, um andere zu bestrafen, ist es tatsächlich weniger wahrscheinlich, dass alle zusammenarbeiten. Dies hat Auswirkungen auf private, gewinnorientierte Gefängnisse, quotenbasierte Polizeiarbeit und zivile Vermögensverlust-wenn die Strafverfolgung Eigentum beschlagnahmt, auch ohne den Eigentümer eines Verbrechens zu beschuldigen oder zu verurteilt.

I’ve linked to the press release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2508479122

From the linked article:

When Punishers Profit, People are More Likely to Break the Rules

UC San Diego researchers show that paying enforcers to punish makes people less likely to cooperate with others, which has major implications for law-enforcement quotas, asset forfeiture, and for-profit prisons

Why do people cooperate with each other and follow society’s rules — and what happens when those who enforce the rules stand to profit from doing so? A new study from the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management researchers tackles this fundamental question and reveals that cooperation breaks down when punishment becomes profitable.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study by Tage Rai, assistant professor of psychology at the Rady School and Raihan Alam, a Rady School doctoral student in management, finds that **when people get paid to punish others, it actually makes everyone less likely to cooperate — even those who would gain from working together.**

**The findings have broad implications for the structure of criminal justice policies, particularly those involving private, for-profit prisons, quota-based policing, and civil asset forfeiture — when law enforcement seizes property believed to be connected to criminal activity, even without charging or convicting the owner of a crime.**