Graduated sanctions ladder

Graduated sanctions ladder

Purpose

Shared resources survive when users can see that others are keeping the rules and when breaking them has a cost. Elinor Ostrom found that long-enduring commons usually rely on monitoring by users or by monitors accountable to them, and on graduated sanctions: first offences are met lightly, repeated or serious ones more heavily. Mild first responses keep honest mistakes and hard times from turning members into enemies; escalation stops persistent free-riding.

Article 1. Monitoring

1. Each season the assembly appoints monitors from among the users, by rotation or lot, and sets what they check: use of the resource, contributions of labour or money, and compliance with the rules in the schedule.
2. Monitors are paid from the common fund or receive a reduction in their own contribution.
3. Any user may report a suspected breach to a monitor. Monitors record every breach they find in a register open to all users.

Article 2. The ladder

Breaches are met in the following order. A step is skipped only under Article 3.

A breach older than 24 months no longer counts for the ladder.

Article 3. Serious breaches

1. A breach that endangers the resource itself or the safety of others (for example destroying infrastructure, or taking far beyond the share allowed) may be taken directly to step 3 or step 4 by decision of two monitors, recorded with reasons.
2. Violence against a monitor or a user is referred at once to the assembly and, where the law requires, to the authorities.

Article 4. Hearing and appeal

1. Before a sanction at step 3 or above, the person is told the facts and may answer in writing or at a meeting with the monitors.
2. Any sanction at step 2 or above may be appealed within 15 days to the users' mediation panel; a sanction at step 5 may be appealed to the independent arbiter named in the dispute rules.
3. A sanction is suspended during appeal unless the breach is continuing.

Article 5. Hardship and repair

1. Where a breach is caused by illness, bereavement or genuine hardship, monitors may replace the sanction with an agreed repayment plan or with labour.
2. A person who completes a sanction and has no further breach for 12 months is restored to good standing, and their name is removed from the published register.
3. Fines go to the common fund and are used for maintenance of the resource, never to pay the monitors who imposed them.

Article 6. Monitoring the monitors

1. Monitors are subject to the same rules and the same ladder.
2. Each season the assembly receives a report of breaches and sanctions by step, area and monitor, so that uneven enforcement can be seen.
3. A monitor who has a close family or business relationship with a person suspected of a breach passes the case to another monitor.