The word “dictator” gets a bad rap. It’s kind of easy to understand why, given some of the people who fall under that title. Stalin was a dictator, as were Mao, Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeini, Hugo Chavez, and Robert Mugabe, among others. Well over 100 million people lost their lives because of those guys over the last century, so there’s that.

Dictators take power, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally and then refuse to give it up. They rule by force of violence or the threat of such, and citizens can rarely do anything to protect themselves.

Image created by Vince Coyner

But that’s today. The original Roman dictators were different, and not like Julius Ceasar, perhaps the most famous dictator in history. Ceasar took power and basically intended to keep it for life, and that’s the model most dictators through history have taken.

But that’s not how the dictatorship was originally supposed to work. According to Wikipedia, in the early days of the Roman Republic,

The dictatorship seems to have been conceived as a way to bypass normal Roman politics and create a short-term magistrate with special powers, serving to defend the Republic in war, or otherwise to cow internal civil unrest, especially if such unrest imperilled the conduct of war.

In other words, a dictator was needed when the normal bureaucracy failed to fix a problem. A dictator’s power was not unlimited, although for the specific purpose for which he was appointed, it was close.

Additionally, the appointment lasted only until the problem to be addressed was actually solved. In practice, a dictator’s term generally lasted six months or less, and, once completed, he would return to his previous position or, as Cincinnatus famously did, to retirement. (Notably, George Washington was hailed as a “New Cincinnatus” for his willingness to leave power after two terms.)

But here is the most important thing: A dictator never stopped being accountable for his actions. While dictators were in office they were virtually untouchable, but once their term expired they could be charged for any unlawful conduct they engaged in during that period. That was rare, however, and there is debate today as to whether a dictator being charged for acts during office was an actual rule.

But what does any of that have to do with America in 2025? Potentially a lot, actually.

We see stories across the country (and frankly throughout the West) almost every day of violent criminals being let out of jail on bond, on laughably low bonds, or sometimes without bond at all. Other times, we hear about hardened criminals being let out of prison on parole only to go right back to crime. And of course, we hear about judges who sentence violent criminals to infuriatingly short sentences.

Across the country, we have leftist District Attorneys and prosecutors who regularly see fit to put the desires of criminals above those of the communities they are sworn to defend. Our system is failing.

And while the American practice of electing DAs would seem to mean that they are close to voters and reflect their desires, the reality is that such offices, perhaps more so than any other in our nation, are susceptible to outside influence. This can be seen by how successfully that hardcore leftist, George Soros, spent just $40 million to saddle communities around the country with cancerous DAs who are responsible for rivers of blood flowing down the streets in some of America’s biggest cities.

The Romans’ solution for an intractable problem they couldn’t solve via business as usual? Dictatorship. We should consider the same.

Not a dictator in the sense of Stalin or Hitler, but rather in the style of the traditional Roman Republic, where an office is created to deal with a problem that the normal bureaucracy can’t seem to fix.

In any city or municipality across the country where the violent crime rate is X or above, the federal government should impose a dictator.

I’d call them Justice Dictators, and their specific role would be to decide on bail / release for criminals accused of any violent crimes within a given jurisdiction. What would make this role interesting would be that these Dictators would also be liable if the people they allow out on bail commit crimes while waiting for their cases to be adjudicated.

But, you say, why would anyone be crazy enough to take such a job? Well, the incentive, of course. And in this case, the incentive would be that, beyond their salary, they’d get to keep the government’s fees / costs of whatever bail the accused pays. These vary by jurisdiction and are often deducted from what the accused is refunded if they don’t violate the terms of their agreement. If they do violate them however they lose the bail and the dictator would lose those accessed fees.

This combination of personal liability—up to and including potentially jail time—and the opportunity to earn money should make the position sufficiently compelling to see someone who can live with risk agree to take it. Essentially, this position would, by definition, force someone to actually balance what’s best for society and what’s best for themselves, something that is woefully missing in today’s system.

Today, DAs, parole board members, and judges essentially exist in the ether above their communities. They make their emperor-like pronouncements and go on with their lives, largely immune to the consequences of those decisions, while the members of the community must bear the full brunt of them. A dictatorship would change that equation.

The consequence, of course, would be far fewer criminals out on the street as they await trial, and you would expect those who were out to be better behaved. Another consequence would be higher costs due to having to keep more prisoners locked up for longer, but that should be offset by a drop in crime and associated costs, given that a minority of criminals commit a majority of America’s crime. And best of all, with fewer recidivist criminals on the street, the police can improve their abysmal success rate in solving crimes. That failure is due in significant part to the fact that cops, knowing that criminals will immediately be back on the streets, sometimes before they’re even done filling out the paperwork, are unwilling even to bother arresting criminals.

Now, you might say this is a bridge too far, or maybe it’s a Rube Goldberg contraption that won’t work. Both may be true, but at the end of the day, the American system of justice is broken and must be fixed.

A key element of an effective criminal justice system is that citizens are confident that the system exists to protect them from criminals (even as due process exists to protect criminals from the system). Today, when ordinary people routinely see known and convicted criminals walking the streets among them it shakes that confidence. And the single biggest driver of that is the potentates of the judicial system who make their decisions from on high but never have to suffer the consequences of them.

One of the basic truths of economics, humanity, and civilization is that men respond to incentives. The current judicial system has few incentives for those in charge to take into consideration the safety of the citizens and communities they ostensibly serve. Until that is rectified, we should expect to see continued erosion of the basic elements of our neighborhoods, communities, and frankly, our country.

You can follow Vince on X at: @ImperfectUSA