Complex Government Structures - Where Would I Learn More About The Pros And Cons?

[Wannabelifeguard]

Hi team,

 

I will be using Law Enforcement as an example in this post, but my question relates to the much broader topic of complexity so feel free to respond with non-law enforcement responses.

 

So in the United States (as an example) the government is insanely complex. For example, there are literally thousands of different law enforcement agencies. You might have the city police doing the main job of the police in a city, but have the local Sheriff running the jails and the state Bureau of Prisons running the prisons. Not too complicated yet. Except if you have someone on the run you might want to call the US Marshals Service, unless it is a case of the person fleeing to avoid prosecution in which case you would want to contact the FBI and ask them to obtain a UFAP (Unlawful flight to Avoid Prosecution) warrant. But if the person on the run is involved with drugs, you might need to let the DEA know, unless it is Tobacco, in which case you should call the ATF, although if they appear to be associated with cross border tobacco smuggling the ICE-HSI might need to get involved. Presumably they will be involved with money laundering but if there is any counterfeiting the Secret Service will need to be notified. Now don't get me started on when the State agencies become involved... 

 

So as you can see there are a lot of different agencies involved in law enforcement, and this leads me to wonder how much time, both formal(classroom) and informal (on the job) time is spent learning the roles of all the different organisations. 

 

It seems like a lot of the US police officers time would be spent just trying to figure out who to refer a case to.

 

To some extent the diversity in agencies is a product of the US legal and social history, but that is not the full story.

 

Question 1: Has anyone ever tried to measure how much the complexity of a system like this actually costs in terms of the time people spend just to learn about it? Even those few extra seconds a beat cop takes to ask their supervisor who to notify about a particular case. It all adds up in the end.

 

Question 2: Is there any research or reason to believe that countries with large populations can have a single law law enforcement agency that still functions properly?

 

Thought 1: I am sure that no matter how long a law enforcement training course is in the United States, a significant amount of the training is probably devoted to learning about the complexity of the US legal system. I mean FBI training is 20 weeks long and is often presented as the best in the world. But I wouldn't be surprised if a academics investigated the training further they would find that 5 weeks of the training would be completely unnecessary in many other countries. For example, learning about federal question jurisdiction, the Attorney General Guidelines/policies that designate which agency is lead in which investigations and which investigations get priority. All that stuff is unnecessary if you have just one law enforcement agency. If a crime is committed, you are the lead agency be default. 

 

EDIT1: Another example would be the US Court system that has different rules and procedures depending on which court you appear in. Again, it seems to be a lot of unnecessary learning to know the rules of State courts, federal courts, county courts, specialist tribunals. It would seem easier if you just needed to know one set of rules for all the courts.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Wannabelifeguard