Assistant Uncivil Servant

Today marks the end of the first week at my internship. "Oh, an internship? Working at NIST again this summer?" No, not NIST. I enjoyed my summer conducting optics research, and I'm sure I benefited greatly from the experience, if only in that I learned how little patience I actually have for research.

No, this summer, I'm a bounty hunter.

Okay, not really. But kinda. I'm not driving cross-country trying to track down Mexican drug lords or shooting bail-jumpers with XXL cans of pepper spray. What I am doing is working in the Montgomery County Police Department's Fugitive Recovery Unit.

The majority of what I've done so far is take warrants (issued by a judge or commissioner requesting the apprehension of an individual) and check various databases to verify information on them and help locate that person. If I find a good lead on the location, I hand it over to the Sergeant or Corporal in charge, and they decide how they want to pick the person up. This could be anything from calling them up and politely asking they turn themselves in to driving to their house en masse, kicking their door down, and dragging them back to the undercover car.

My other main task is sending in MVA Suspension Notices. Basically, whenever we get a bench warrant (that is, one from a judge issued because the defendant failed to appear in court), we send a letter to the person notifying them of the warrant and advising them to take care of it ASAP. (The letter, by the way, is quite polite, but between the lines reads something like this: "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.") If after 30 days the warrant is still active, I send a notification to the Motor Vehicle Association telling them to suspend that driver's license.

(As a side note, my first conversation with one of the detectives assigned to Fugitive Unit went something like this:

Me: "Um, detective? What should I put down in the MVA Notice if they don't have a driver's license number listed?"
Him: "Well, if its not listed, you can't suspend it. They probably don't have one."
Me: "Ah... that would explain why this warrant is for 'Driving without a license'...."

Yeah, I felt a bit silly. Stupid first impressions...)

In any event, these are all fairly nasty things to do to a person. John Stuart Mill, who describes the ethical principle of utilitarianism (in a book titled Utilitarianism, no less), bases his system of ethics on what effect it has on the total happiness of the population. Thus the ethical action is whatever brings the most happiness to the most people (Mindy's famous Joy Units are an excellent way of explaining this idea).

What's always bothered me about utilitarianism is this nagging sense of doubt that what makes people happy is always the right thing to do. In this case, I'm pretty certain nobody enjoys getting their license suspended (or their door kicked in by armed men). I've been working about a week, and I've suspended around a hundred licenses, which probably makes me responsible for a lot more unhappiness than most of the defendants I'm doing it to.

The utilitarian might say that, while my actions cause one person a fair bit of unhappiness, every other person reaps the (happiness-increasing) benefits of social order and public peace. It seems like a bit of a stretch, though, that the difference between one shoplifter's ability to drive is worth the headache he'll suffer when he gets pulled over and his license comes back as suspended.

[Play Along At Home!: A side-argument, often used in support of anarcho-capitalism, is the How Many Men Question. Phrased simply, it goes something like this: "How many men does it take to morally steal a car?" Think it over for yourself, and when you've decided, follow this link.]

Furthermore, it raises a bigger issue: How do you tell? Sure, in some cases its cut-and-dry, but other times a proper accounting of the gains and loses of happiness in a given case would require quantifying the resultant happiness of every person on the planet for every possible contingency. You could spend years calculating the morallity of a single decision and still not get beyond a given level of certainty.

Mill's answer to this, which essentially reads "well, do the best you can on short notice," is a little underwhelming, and kind of a cop-out besides. This is already a pretty decent post, so I'll save the discussion of alternatives to utilitarianism for another time. In the meantime, I'll keep doing my job: Helping bad things happen to bad people.

Next Time: John B. Watson & Silent Hill 2