Make local governments pay part of the cleanup costs of crime, disaster and addiction, and refund them when those costs fall
In short
- Local governments pay part of the cost of prisons and of rebuilding after disasters.
- If a local government's cleanup costs fall below the year before, the national government pays back the difference.
- Local governments can spend the refund on prevention, such as counseling centers, patrols and river embankments.
- To stop towns from hiding crimes to cut costs, surveys ask residents directly about the harm they have suffered.
If this comes true
In a town where the factory has closed, fewer young people are sent to prison, and the town hall uses the refunded money to open a counseling center that stays open at night, where a father who lost his job gets help to quit drinking.
Perhaps
A town police force that wants to cut costs might leave a street fight at night out of its records, and a young man who was beaten might see his complaint fade away.
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The proposal in detail
The plan covers the "cleanup costs" shared by three areas: crime, disasters and addiction. Specifically, these are the cost of keeping residents in prisons and detention centers, the recovery money the national government spends after a disaster, and the cost of ambulance trips and long hospital stays caused by addiction. Today the national government or a wider regional government pays most of these costs, but under this plan the local government where the residents live would also pay part of them. The share is set by a "standard amount," based on each local government's past several years of results, adjusted for population and disaster risk. If the actual cost comes in below the standard amount, the national government pays most of the difference back over several years, and the local government can choose how to spend it on prevention, such as counseling centers, places for young people to spend time, patrols, embankments and evacuation routes, and places for treatment. If the cost goes above the standard amount, the local government pays a fixed share of the excess. To keep poor local governments from suddenly carrying a heavy burden, there is a cap on the burden, and areas with low incomes pay a smaller share. For disasters, only damage on land that the local government newly allowed to be developed after it was designated a danger zone counts, and huge disasters beyond what was expected are excluded. The plan has nothing to do with court verdicts or the length of sentences, and an independent statistics agency does the cost calculations. To prevent number tricks, regular surveys ask residents directly about the harm they have suffered, separate from police records, and payments stop for any local government whose two sets of numbers differ greatly.
BenefitsThe more a community spends on prevention, the more money it keeps
The biggest change is that prevention starts to pay off for local governments. Because they pay part of the cleanup costs and get money back when they reduce them, mayors come to treat prevention not as a job for when there is money to spare but as a way to protect the budget. Plain, unglamorous work that was put off before now has a clear reason and a source of funds: helping people who leave prison find housing and jobs, giving people with addictions a place to ask for help early, and refusing to let houses be built on dangerous riverbanks. Because local governments choose how to spend the refunded money, a town with a lot of crime can build places for young people, and a town with a lot of floods can build evacuation routes, so each can act in a way that fits its own situation. Linking the three areas in one system also means overlaps get counted within a single account, such as addiction treatment reducing crime and neighborhood patrols helping people evacuate in a disaster. And when support reaches people before they need prison or emergency care, more of them avoid losing their family, their job or their home. Changing the flow of the budget directly protects people's lives.
DrawbacksIt risks overlooked crimes and pushing out people who need help
A system that moves money by numbers also creates pressure to distort the numbers. In a local government that gains when fewer people are sent to prison, there is a risk that police overlook minor crimes by not recording them or by refusing to accept reports of harm. For the victim, this means their complaint is buried to protect the town's finances, which turns a safety system upside down. Checking with surveys of residents will not catch everything. More serious is the temptation to drive away people with addictions, people who have left prison, and people who live on cheap, dangerous land. If a town thins out its support so that these people move to the next town, the cost moves to that town. If such pushing out spreads, the people who most need support are the ones who lose their place. Also, because the standard is based on past results, poor areas that already have a lot of crime or disasters find it harder to come in below the standard, and some years they are left with only the burden. Even with caps and reductions, the danger of widening the gap between regions does not go away. In exchange for getting the incentives right, the heavy work of watching for number tricks and the pushing out of weak people remains forever.
Learn the background
In many societies, money for safety goes mostly to what happens after the fact. Running prisons, rebuilding after floods and providing emergency care for people brought down by drug or alcohol addiction cost a lot, yet little budget goes to the local counseling centers, places for young people, and higher embankments that could prevent them. The reason is clear. The work of prevention falls to the local governments closest to people, but the money saved when something is prevented goes to the national or wider regional governments that pay for prisons and recovery. When a local government spends on prevention, nothing comes back to its own purse, and when it neglects prevention, no bill for the cleanup arrives. On top of that, a crime or disaster that was prevented cannot be seen, so it rarely earns credit for a mayor or council member, and the visible response after the fact gets the praise. There is also a mismatch in which opening housing on dangerous land raises a local government's tax income, while the national government pays for the flood costs. As a result, people keep leaving prison and returning, homes keep flooding in the same places, and people with addictions keep being taken to the emergency room again and again, and each time, the lives that fall apart belong to residents who were already in a weak position.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-23a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes