Why does the police love catching you for smoking in the wrong place or for reposting a song on VKontakte, but they are in no hurry to find a stolen bicycle or solve a real crime? It’s simple: it is all because of the notorious “stick system” (KPI).
Imagine: a police officer needs to collect a certain number of “sticks”—solved crimes, fines, and reports. If they don’t reach the required number in a quarter, the superiors will be unhappy: no bonuses, no promotion, and they might even get reprimanded. Moreover, indicators must be improved every year, competing with one’s own past self (this is called the “PYP+1” principle: previous year period + one stick on top). It’s a kind of endless run in a circle, where each subsequent year is even worse than the previous one.
As a result, real crimes are often difficult to solve, and some even ruin the statistics. Had your phone stolen or even a serious crime committed? Good luck getting the report registered, because investigating it is difficult and tedious; it’s easier to pretend the crime never happened. They are especially reluctant to take on serious crimes without clear evidence—because these only increase the percentage of unsolved cases, meaning they worsen the statistics. The police prefer to grab “victimless crimes”—these are the easiest to close in a report. Caught on the street with a beer or violated some crazy ban on “propaganda”—an excellent stick for the report! The officer is happy, and the statistics flourish.
The pressure to meet the plan at any cost pushes some employees toward direct forgery. If there aren’t enough real crimes, the statistics have to be “made.” This is because for meeting and exceeding plans, superiors not only praise but also regularly issue bonuses and incentives to employees. These can be monetary bonuses, additional vacations, or even accelerated career advancement. It is rumored that especially “successful” police officers are sometimes even provided with housing. The stick system is encouraged at all levels, creating a huge temptation to chase minor “misdemeanors” without a victim and even fabricate cases.
In the West, meanwhile, such a system is generally considered absurd and bad form. In 26 US states, any “quotas” for arrests and fines are banned by law. In the remaining states, such practices are not officially encouraged and are under strict public control, as they are considered a form of corruption.
Of course, we are not idealizing Western countries—the state there is similarly a stationary bandit. And in some places, there are also excesses. For example, in Canada, there is an unspoken statistic, and news regularly arrives from there about similar persecutions for all sorts of “victimless crimes.” But still, one can often trace the difference between the motivation of officials and security forces in the West compared to how it happens here, which has a huge impact on the lives of ordinary people.
What is most sad is that this stick system literally motivates the police to commit repressions against peaceful people. When a plan needs to be met urgently, it is easy to fabricate a case or punish someone for some nonsense, even if no one suffered from your actions. That is why we have so many “victimless crimes,” where innocent people are imprisoned while real criminals walk free.
