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The police abolition movement is a
political movement
A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some t ...
, mostly active in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, that advocates replacing
policing
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and th ...
with other systems of
public safety.
Police abolitionists believe that policing, as a system, is inherently flawed and cannot be reformed—a view that rejects the ideology of
police reformists.
While
reformists seek to address the ways in which policing occurs, abolitionists seek to transform policing altogether through a process of disbanding, disempowering, and
disarming the police.
Abolitionists argue that the institution of policing is deeply rooted in a history of
white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
and
settler colonialism and that it is inseparable from a pre-existing
racial capitalist
Racial capitalism is a concept reframing the history of capitalism as grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities, typically from Black people. It was described by Cedric J. Robinson in ...
order, and thus believe a
reformist approach to policing will always fail.
Police abolition is a process that requires communities to create alternatives to policing. This process involves the deconstruction of the preconceived understandings of policing and resisting co-option by reformists. It also involves engaging in and supporting practices that reduce police power and
legitimacy
Legitimacy, from the Latin ''legitimare'' meaning "to make lawful", may refer to:
* Legitimacy (criminal law)
* Legitimacy (family law)
* Legitimacy (political)
See also
* Bastard (law of England and Wales)
* Illegitimacy in fiction
* Legit (d ...
, such as
defunding the police
"Defund the police" is a slogan that supports removing funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and ...
.
In the
George Floyd protests and riots,
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
and other activists used the phrase "defund the police". The defunding movement advocates reducing police department budgets or the delegation of certain police responsibilities to other organizations.
Some activists have proposed the diversion of police funds to
social services
Social services are a range of public services intended to provide support and assistance towards particular groups, which commonly include the disadvantaged. They may be provided by individuals, private and independent organisations, or administe ...
, such as youth or housing services.
Despite exceptions, advocates for defunding the police rarely call for outright abolition of police.
Police abolition has been criticized by many sociologists,
criminologists, journalists, and politicians.
[
]
History
The United States established its first militarized police force in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
in 1905, directly influenced by imperialist
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
American warfare conducted by the Philippine Constabulary. The Pennsylvania State Police
The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) is the state police agency of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, responsible for statewide law enforcement. The Pennsylvania State Police is a full service law enforcement agency which handles both traffic and cr ...
were created by Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker
Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker (April 9, 1843 – September 2, 1916) was an American politician serving as the List of governors of Pennsylvania, 23rd Governor of Pennsylvania from 1903 to 1907.
He also served Pennsylvania as a judge and wrote abo ...
, who intended for the force to serve as a means "to crush disorders, whether industrial or otherwise, which arose in the foreigner-filled districts of the state." Virtually all of the officers were drawn from the U.S. military
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. The armed forces consists of six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. The president of the United States is the ...
, many coming directly from the Constabulary. While the state police force was "supposedly statewide" in name, "the force was actually deployed in four troops to cover the mining districts", which were highly populated by "foreigners". Nearly all of the troopers were "American born and their motto was 'One American can lick a hundred foreigners,' as recorded by historian Thomas Reppetto." They referred to themselves as the Black Hussars
The Brunswick Ducal Field-Corps (german: Herzoglich Braunschweigisches Feldcorps), commonly known as the Black Brunswickers in English and the ''Schwarze Schar'' (Black Troop, Black Horde, or Black Host) or ''Schwarze Legion'' (Black Legion) in G ...
and were referred to colloquially as "Cossacks."
As early as 1906, the state police were already stirring resentment by shooting labor strike
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became common during the I ...
rs and escaping accountability. In 1906, troopers shot twenty strikers in Mount Carmel
Mount Carmel ( he, הַר הַכַּרְמֶל, Har haKarmel; ar, جبل الكرمل, Jabal al-Karmil), also known in Arabic as Mount Mar Elias ( ar, link=no, جبل مار إلياس, Jabal Mār Ilyās, lit=Mount Saint Elias/Elijah), is a c ...
. Although the lieutenant in command was arrested for assault and battery, "the state exonerated
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate convicts are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially w ...
him and his men of all charges." Governor Pennypacker expressed support, stating that the troopers had "established a reputation which has gone all over the Country... with the result that the labor difficulties in the anthracite
Anthracite, also known as hard coal, and black coal, is a hard, compact variety of coal that has a submetallic luster. It has the highest carbon content, the fewest impurities, and the highest energy density of all types of coal and is the hig ...
coal region entirely disappeared." The state police were commonly called in to suppress labor strike activity, were used as a weapon of the elite class in Pennsylvania, and regularly escaped repercussions for their actions. As stated by Jesse Garwood, "A tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
policeman can arrest anybody, anytime." The United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unit ...
"pressed for the abolition of this 'Cossack' force" but retreated during World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
when more transformative labor organizing from the Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines genera ...
(IWW) arose in the region. Although they had supported abolition for nearly a decade, the United Mine Workers were satisfied when a raid was conducted on an IWW meeting in 1916 in Old Forge. All 262 people present were arrested, and "after the release of some undercover informant
An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informan ...
s, the rest were sentenced to thirty days."
Immigration to the United States heavily declined in 1914, which resulted in some mining communities becoming more Americanized. As a result, "Pennsylvania's industrial belt was no longer a land of cultural deviance, but just another rural slum
A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...
." A wider police abolitionist movement had emerged as a response to the violence inflicted by the public police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and ...
and the private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
coal and iron police during a series of armed labor strikes and conflicts known as the Coal Wars (1890–1930). Throughout the period, there were numerous reports of miners being severely beaten and murdered by the public and private police. State police fired indiscriminately into tent cities, which resulted in the "killing or wounding of women and children", and numerous sexual assault
Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...
and rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...
s committed by officers became common. After witnessing the beating of a 70-year-old citizen, American trade unionist and member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Pennsylvania General Assembly, the legislature of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. There are 203 members, elected for two-year terms from single member districts.
It ...
James H. Maurer proposed legislation to abolish the public Pennsylvania State Police
The Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) is the state police agency of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, responsible for statewide law enforcement. The Pennsylvania State Police is a full service law enforcement agency which handles both traffic and cr ...
.
In 1928, the ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
issued a pamphlet entitled "The Shame of Pennsylvania", declaring that thousands of public and private police had been "allowed to abuse their power without inquiry or punishment" yet ultimately concluded that, without a "fearless governor", abolishing the police was "not conceivable." In 1929, the murder of Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
émigré miner John Barcoski
John Barcoski (also spelled as Barkoski, Borkovski, or Barkowsky; December 15, 1889 – February 10, 1929) was a Polish émigré miner brutally beaten to death by Pennsylvania's Coal and Iron Police on February 10, 1929. His passing and subsequen ...
eventually resulted in the abolishment of Pennsylvania's private anti-labor Coal and Iron Police system in 1931. Barcoski was beaten to death by three officers employed by American banker Richard Beaty Mellon's Pittsburgh Coal Company. James Renshaw Cox
James Renshaw Cox (1886–1951) was an American Roman Catholic priest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known for his pro-labor activism. He was a candidate for President of the United States in 1932, and also an organizer of an unprecedented protest ...
, who worked with a coalition of civic, labor, and religious leaders to abolish the private police, referred to the agency as "tyranny by the wealthy industrial people."
Ideology
Police abolition is founded on the idea that police, as they exist in society, are harmful to the people and must therefore be abolished. Abolitionists push back against reformists who, as Correia and Wall describe, "refuse to even consider that a world without police and private property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
might actually be a safer and more democratic world than the one we know today ndnever get tired of telling poor communities, routinely terrorized by police, to simply be patient, follow police orders, and work hard to escape the ghetto
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
." Correia and Wall write that "whether in Detroit in 1967 or Ferguson in 2014, insurgent movements of poor Black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...
and Brown
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...
people know that police reform always leads to more criminalization
Criminalization or criminalisation, in criminology, is "the process by which behaviors and individuals are transformed into crime and criminals". Previously legal acts may be transformed into crimes by legislation or judicial decision. However, ...
, harassment
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...
, arrest
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody (legal protection or control), usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questi ...
, and police killing
Following are lists of killings by law enforcement officers.
* List of killings by law enforcement officers by country
** List of killings by law enforcement officers in Canada
** List of killings by law enforcement officers in China
** List of ki ...
in their communities."
Abolitionists argue that policing in the United States is rooted in colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
and slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and therefore cannot be reformed. As summarized by Mahesh Nalla and Graeme Newman: "Many policing problems plagued the new cities of America. They included controlling certain classes, including slaves
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
and Indians
Indian or Indians may refer to:
Peoples South Asia
* Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor
** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country
* South Asia ...
; maintaining order; regulating specialized functions such as selling in the market, delivering goods, making bread, packing goods for export; maintaining health and sanitation; ensuring the orderly use of the streets by vehicles; controlling liquor; controlling gambling and vice; controlling weapons; managing pests and other animals." Early policing in America had little to do with crime control
Crime control refers to methods taken to reduce crime in a society. Crime control standardizes police work. Crime prevention is also widely implemented in some countries, through government police and, in many cases, private policing methods such ...
and was performed by groups of "volunteer citizens who served on slave patrol
Slave patrols—also known as patrollers, patterrollers, pattyrollers or paddy rollersVerner D. Mitchell, Cynthia Davis (2019). ''Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement''. p. 323. Rowman & Littlefield—were organized groups of armed men who m ...
s or night watches", as recorded by Victor Kappeler and Larry Gaines. Such slave patrols, for the purpose of keeping slaves from rebelling or escaping, had the power to monitor and inspect slave populations for signs of dissent as well as to watch for and apprehend traveling escaped slaves. Modern police organizations in the United States were developed from these early slave patrols and night watches, using tactics such as enforcement of vagrancy and voting restrictions laws to "orce
Orce is a municipality located in the province of Granada, in southeastern Spain. According to the 2009 census (INE), the city has a population of 1333 inhabitants.
Paleoanthropology
Orce is the location of the paleo-archaeological sites known a ...
newly freed blacks into subservient economic and political roles" after the formal abolition of slavery. An example were the New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
settler
A settler is a person who has human migration, migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area.
A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a ...
s who appointed Indian constable
A constable is a person holding a particular office, most commonly in criminal law enforcement. The office of constable can vary significantly in different jurisdictions. A constable is commonly the rank of an officer within the police. Other peop ...
s to police Native Americans, and the Province of Carolina
Province of Carolina was a province of England (1663–1707) and Great Britain (1707–1712) that existed in North America and the Caribbean from 1663 until partitioned into North and South on January 24, 1712. It is part of present-day Alaba ...
that developed "the nation's first slave patrol", organized groups that would go on to exist in Southern and Northern states, in 1704.
Abolitionists argue that increased budgets for police officers do not generally go towards fighting violence and preserving community safety but instead go towards surveilling the public and criminalizing civilians, such as drugs, traffic, minor property offenses, debt collection, evictions, controlling unhoused people, and mental health calls, servicing those with political or economic power. Abolitionists, such as cultural critic Stacy Lee Kong, argue that the Robb Elementary School shooting
On May 24, 2022, a mass shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, and wounded seventeen other ...
exposed how many community safety functions of policing are in fact myths, and that the police exist instead to protect the interests of power and property.
Even police and prison abolition is considered by abolitionists as "not a definitive end, because police and prisons lie at the heart of the capitalist state
The capitalist state is the state, its functions and the form of organization it takes within capitalist socioeconomic systems.Jessop, Bob (January 1977). "Recent Theories of the Capitalist State". ''Soviet Studies''. 1: 4. pp. 353–373. This ...
, which is always evolving, adapting, and reconstituting itself in response to resistance and insurgency." As stated by Luis Fernandez, professor of criminology
Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...
, "asking the question 'what are alternatives to policing?' is to ask the question 'what are alternatives to capitalism?'" Fernandez identifies that "the role of the police is to maintain the capitalist social order
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order ...
, to maintain the social order so that those particular people who have power can do their business with the least amount of disruption ... possible." From this perspective, abolition of the police and prisons in the United States is inherently intertwined with undoing the racial capitalist order. As stated by Joshua Briond for '' Hampton Institute'', "Black death is a necessity of racial capitalism and the institutions (such as policing and prisons) that exist to uphold it." As a result, Briond concludes that "the only realistic solution to a reality in which anti-Black terror, violence, and death is an inevitability to the functionality of a system, is abolition."
Abolition as a process
Police abolitionists see abolition as a process of disbanding, disempowering, and disarming the police in the transition to a society without police. This may take several forms for abolitionists, such as imagining alternatives to policing, directly challenging the legitimacy and roles of policing, resisting liberal attempts to co-opt
Co-option (also co-optation, sometimes spelt coöption or coöptation) has two common meanings.
It may refer to the process of adding members to an elite group at the discretion of members of the body, usually to manage opposition and so maintai ...
, incorporate, or reconcile the uncompromising objective to abolish the police, and engaging in practices which undermine the authority and power of the police, such as defunding the police. As stated by academic Alex S. Vitale, police abolition is a process, rather than a singular event:
Well, I'm certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police. What I'm talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them. And my feeling is that this encompasses actually the vast majority of what police do. We have better alternatives for them. Even if you take something like burglary — a huge amount of burglary activity is driven by drug use. And we need to completely rethink our approach to drugs so that property crime isn't the primary way that people access drugs. We don't have any part of this country that has high-quality medical drug treatment on demand. But we have policing on demand everywhere. And it's not working.
Creating alternatives
Briond states that "the lack of political imagination, beyond the electoral strategy and reformism, and the inability to envision a world, or even country, devoid of police and prisons is rooted in (anti-Black), racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage." In opposition to the position that police abolition is inconceivable, abolitionists support creating alternatives to policing. Activist Tourmaline
Tourmaline ( ) is a crystalline silicate mineral group in which boron is compounded with elements such as aluminium, iron, magnesium, sodium, lithium, or potassium. Tourmaline is a gemstone and can be found in a wide variety of colors.
The ...
references Andrea Ritchie use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) -->
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to explain how "people act with abolitionist politics all the time, without actually knowing it." Ritchie presented the following example to illustrate this point: "You and your friend are at a bar. Your friend drove there. Your friend wants to drive home. Are you gonna call the cops or are you going to say 'no, I'll drive you home; I'll call a cab; I will take your keys'?" Tourmaline states that this is an example of "abolition at work", since "people are not constantly calling the cops on their friends to prevent them from drunk driving
Drunk driving (or drink-driving in British English) is the act of driving under the influence of alcohol. A small increase in the blood alcohol content increases the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash.
In the United States, alcohol is invo ...
; people are finding unique and creative ways to get their friends from not driving while they're drunk."
In response, lawyer and activist Dean Spade states that "it seems like a big part of an example like that is the difference between how we feel about somebody we know—like, you're about to commit a crime, you're about to get in a car and drive drunk, but it never occurs to me that I should call the cops on you, because I don't see you as disposable, I know you—versus, scenario wherethere's strangers on the subway and somebody's doing something that someone doesn't like and instead of figuring out what's going on or uestioningcan this be stopped, can this be less harmful, or can people get taken care of, there's a kind of immediate" response to make it "into a police problem." Spade says that this occurs because of the ways in which "people are alienated from one another in our culture" which has made it socially "not okay" to "connect and try to figure out how to solve the problem" together.
In response, Rachel Herzing suggests that we learn from people who have developed and proposed alternative strategies which rely on community development, networking and negotiation, group self-defense
Self-defense (self-defence primarily in Commonwealth English) is a countermeasure that involves defending the health and well-being of oneself from harm. The use of the right of self-defense as a legal justification for the use of force in ...
learning, workbooks and other materials which present alternatives for people who are unsure of what alternatives may exist, citing ''Fumbling Towards Repair'' by Mariame Kaba
Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police. She is the author of ''We Do This 'Til We Free Us'' (2021). The Mariame Kaba Papers ...
and Shira Hassan and ''Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement'', edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi.
Delegitimizing the police
Abolitionists argue that delegitimizing the police as an institution of society and deconstructing the logic of policing are necessary towards actualizing police abolition. Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that "by attacking the police as an institution, by challenging its very right to exist, the contemporary abolitionist movement contains the potential to radically transform society."
Dean Spade states that "clearly US policing has been having a major legitimacy crisis because of the Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
movement." However, Spade cites Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Ruth Wilson Gilmore (born April 2, 1950) is Prison abolition movement, a prison abolitionist and prison scholar. She is the Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics and professor of geography in Earth and Environmental Sciences at T ...
and Craig Gilmore's article "Beyond Bratton" in ''Policing the Planet'' in order to express how legitimacy crises historically have often actually resulted in the expansion of policing: "In the U.S., after the crisis in the 1960s and 70s that was provoked by the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Califo ...
, the Young Lords
The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-det ...
, and so many different anti-racist and anti-colonial movements calling out the police and more people seeing police violence and seeing the police as racist
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
, the police just did a lot of new PR moves, like they expanded police to have police be homeless outreach workers and to have police go into every classroom in the United States and do a drug abuse education program called D.A.R.E." As a result, Spade concludes that "the idea that just because we provoke a egitimacycrisis we'll get a reduction or elimination is something we have to really question."
Resisting co-option
Abolitionists believe that calls for abolition may be co-opted
Co-option (also co-optation, sometimes spelt coöption or coöptation) has two common meanings.
It may refer to the process of adding members to an elite group at the discretion of members of the body, usually to manage opposition and so maintai ...
and drained of their power by reformists who propose reforms which actually function to strengthen police power. Tourmaline argues that this process of expecting the state to reduce harm and violence through increasing policing is embedded within the state's attempts to maintain its own legitimacy and power: "the logic of the state is constantly demanding us to think of ways to increase policing as a way to decrease harm and violence." Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that an abolitionist praxis which "adopts uncompromising positions that resist liberal attempts at co-optation, incorporation, and/or reconciliation" should be adopted and amplified as a result.
The Ferguson unrest reform proposal of body cameras for police has been cited as an example of a reformist approach to policing which worked to strengthen police power and build wealth for the less than lethal
Non-lethal weapons, also called nonlethal weapons, less-lethal weapons, less-than-lethal weapons, non-deadly weapons, compliance weapons, or pain-inducing weapons are weapons intended to be less likely to kill a living target than conventional ...
weapons industry while failing to provide material relief to those impacted by police violence. Dean Spade argues that "the goal of those kinds of reforms is to demobilize us, to tell us 'your problem has been solved' ... and that is so important for us to deeply resist."
Mariame Kaba
Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police. She is the author of ''We Do This 'Til We Free Us'' (2021). The Mariame Kaba Papers ...
argues that reform will always be a failed project when it comes to police, because police have the power to execute state power without any limitations: "How are we going to reform an institution that basically has the ability to decide whether or not to use violence in any conceivable situation and is sanctioned by the state to do so?" Kaba points to examples which illustrate how police are not accountable to the law, but engage in the work of maintaining order rather than in enforcing the law.
Divest and invest
Defunding the police can be considered as a step towards abolition, by using funds allocated to police to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing over time until the institution is fully abolished. Such initiatives could include social workers, mental health therapy, domestic abuse centres, drug counselling, and low cost housing. For instance, in Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
, the police budget is over 40% of the city's discretionary spending. In many US cities, the police department is the largest single budget item.
Defunding the police frees up funds to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing. Activist and advocacy groups like Movement 4 Black Lives call for "divest/invest" programs to divert police budgets into programs that have been proven to reduce crime. According to Patrisse Cullors
Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac (née Cullors-Brignac; born June 20, 1983) is an American activist, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, artist and writer. Cullors created the hashtag in 2013 and has written and spoken widely abo ...
, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, "We're ready to chip away at the line items inside of a police budget that really are nonsensical. Police should not be in charge of mental health crises. They should not be in charge of dealing with homelessness. They should not be in charge of 'supporting' people with drug dependency and addiction. Those are three line items which we can cut out of the police budget and then put that back into health care." In Eugene, Oregon
Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.
As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...
, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program called CAHOOTS has handled mental health calls since 1989 and is often cited as a model for an alternative to police handling mental health calls. In 2019 CAHOOTS responded to 20% of Eugene's 911 calls on a budget of $2 million.
In June 2020, the 2012 disbanding of the Camden, New Jersey
Camden is a city in and the county seat of Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Camden is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area and is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the 2020 ...
police department and replacement with a new one under county control was referred to as an example of abolishing the police by some media outlets. In 2012, Camden was considered "the most dangerous city in the United States", and the city had numerous problems with police corruption and many instances in which police would plant drugs on citizens. The department's disbanding and replacement allowed for funds to be reallocated to community-building initiatives. The new department had more officers, but their roles were reframed to be community-oriented and focused on de-escalating violence. A seven-year study showed that violent crime dropped 42% and the crime rate dropped from 79 per 1,000 to 44 per 1,000. Camden dropped down the list of most dangerous cities in the U.S. to tenth. Calls have increased to disband municipal and county police agencies in favor of standardized policing state-wide.
Outside the United States
Canada
On April 12, 2020, following two shootings by the Winnipeg Police Service
The Winnipeg Police Service is the police force of the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
History
When Winnipeg became a city, in 1873, an election was held to select the city's new mayor and aldermen. Those appointed decided to hire city o ...
, James Wilt published an article in ''Canadian Dimension
''Canadian Dimension'' (''CD'') is a Canadian left-wing magazine founded in 1963 by Cy Gonick, and published out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, four times a year. It reported a circulation of 3,500 copies in 2013.
''Canadian Dimension'' is a forum for le ...
'', arguing that policing was increasing the criminalization of Indigenous Canadians and of the homeless, and that "an institution designed to displace, dispossess, and break apart families and communities in the interests of capital cannot provide 'justice.'" Wilt noted how much budget goes to policing and called for the Winnipeg Police to be disbanded and their budget spent on social services.
Europe
Law-enforcement abolition movements in Europe were most notable in the 1970s as the prison abolition movement, but the police abolition movement did not see similar levels of popularity.
Hong Kong
During the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests
The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement, also known as the 2019 Hong Kong protests, or the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, were a series of demonstrations from 15 March 2019 in response to the introduction by the Hong Kong government ...
, the abolition of police was one of the requests by protestors. The slogan "Disband the Police Force immediately" ( zh, 解散警隊,刻不容緩) appeared in many areas during the protest.
Contemporary responses
Social scientists
According to Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
sociologist Patrick Sharkey
Patrick Sharkey (born ) is an American urban sociologist and criminologist. He has been Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University since 2019. He was formerly Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at New York U ...
, the best scientific evidence available shows that police are effective in reducing violence, while there is also a growing body of evidence that community organizations can play a central role in reducing violence:
In an interview with '' Vox'', Sharkey acknowledged the effectiveness of aggressive policing and mass incarceration in reducing violence but said these methods have had "staggering costs". He went on to say, "The next model should be one driven primarily by residents and local organizations as the central actors. Police still certainly have a role to play, but responding to violent crime takes up only a tiny fraction of police officers’ time. So the idea here is that we can rely on residents and local organizations to take over most of the duties that fficerscurrently handle and make sure neighborhoods are safe."
Criminologists Justin Nix and Scott Wolfe state in ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', "We have enough research evidence to be concerned about the immediate impact of drastic budget cuts or wholesale disbanding of police agencies: Crime and victimization will increase....These collateral consequences will disproportionately harm minority communities that need help, not further marginalization." They go on to state that "Cities that have more police officers per capita tend to have lower crime rates. This does not necessarily mean we need to hire more police. Rather, having more officers per capita provides greater ability to dedicate resources to community- and problem-oriented policing approaches that have been shown to reduce crime and improve community satisfaction." They further argue that police departments need to be held more accountable for their use of funds, suggesting more emphasis on evidence-based practices, and say that making the police responsible for so many social ills should be reconsidered, although stating the infrastructure to handle those should be in place before reallocating funds.
Media
Matthew Yglesias, writing in '' Vox'', criticized police abolition activists for lacking a plan for how to deal with violent crime, and for ignoring the substantial literature finding that having more police leads to less violent crime. He stated that their dismissal of police reform ignores that even modest reforms have been shown to reduce police misconduct. He writes that across government as a whole, only a very small portion of spending goes to police, and that while more social spending would probably reduce crime, that does not need to come out of police budgets, noting that the United States actually has 35% fewer police officers per capita than the rest of the world. He also states that abolishing public police services would lead to a surge in the use of private security
A private security company (PSC) is a business entity which provides armed or unarmed security services and expertise to clients in the private or public sectors.
Overview
Private security companies are defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Stat ...
services by those who can afford them, and that such services would lack accountability.
Public opinion
The contemporary police abolition movement began at least as early as 2014 during the Ferguson riots
The Ferguson unrest (sometimes called the Ferguson uprising, Ferguson protests, or the Ferguson riots) were a series of protests and riots which began in Ferguson, Missouri on August 10, 2014, the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Bro ...
but gained strength in 2020 during the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd
On , George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in the U.S. city of Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer. Floyd had been arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's n ...
and the protests surrounding it.
A YouGov poll from May 29–30, 2020, found that "most Americans do not support reducing law enforcement budgets. Close to two-thirds (65%) oppose cutting police force funding. Just 16 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans support that idea." An Economist/YouGov poll from June 14–16, 2020, found that 22 percent of African-Americans favor police abolition.[ A June 23–July 6 survey by ]Gallup
Gallup may refer to:
*Gallup, Inc., a firm founded by George Gallup, well known for its opinion poll
*Gallup (surname), a surname
*Gallup, New Mexico, a city in New Mexico, United States
**Gallup station, an Amtrak train in downtown Gallup, New Me ...
found that 81% of African-Americans wanted police to spend the same amount of time or more time in their neighborhoods, as did 86% of the sample as a whole.
Politicians
U.S. president Joe Biden does not support defunding or abolishing the police. Many members of the U.S. House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
have criticized the movement as a distraction from other efforts, notably Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.[ House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn warned Democratic leaders against engaging in the movement on a private call in June 2020, over fears that Republicans could propagandize the controversy during the upcoming election.] U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...
opposed police abolition, stating that all cities in the world have police; instead, he argued that police departments should be staffed with "well-educated, well-trained, well-paid professionals", stating "we want to redefine what police departments do, give them the support they need to make their jobs better" while ensuring "every police officer in this country s held
S, or s, is the nineteenth Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphab ...
accountable for what he or she does."
Former president Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...
criticized the efforts to defund police departments and said it was important to have "law and order" in the United States. According to Attorney General William P. Barr, there would be an increase in "vigilantism" and "more killings" in major American cities.
Cities
According to ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', cities across the United States were considering defunding, downsizing, or abolishing their departments following George Floyd's murder.
In Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins ...
, advocacy group MPD150, which had previously published a report in 2017 recommending the Minneapolis Police Department
The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the primary law enforcement agency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It is also the largest police department in Minnesota. Formed in 1867, it is the second-oldest police department in Minnesot ...
(MPD) be abolished, argued that "the people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises" and that first responders should be social workers and mental health providers. Public schools, parks, multiple private businesses and venues, and the University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
have severed ties with the police department. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey was booed by a large crowd of protestors after refusing to defund and abolish the police. Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council
The Minneapolis City Council is the lawmaking body of Minneapolis. It consists of 13 members, elected from separate wards to four-year terms, via a ranked-choice method. The council structure has been in place since the 1950s. In recent elections ...
—a veto-proof majority—pledged on June 7, 2020 to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, despite opposition from Mayor Frey. Supporters of the pledge included Alondra Cano
Alondra Cano (born September 26, 1981) is an American politician, activist, and former member of the Minneapolis City Council from the 9th Ward.
Early life and education
Cano was born in Cokato, Minnesota and raised in Chihuahua, Mexico befo ...
, Jeremiah Ellison
Jeremiah Bey Ellison (born October 23, 1989) is an American politician and artist serving as a member of the Minneapolis City Council, representing Ward 5. Ellison is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.
Early life
Ell ...
, and council president Lisa Bender. U.S. representative Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for since 2019. She is a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party. Before her election to Congress, Omar served in the Minnesota ...
, whose district includes Minneapolis, stated, "the Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform. It's time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis." A few weeks after the pledge, the City Council passed a provision for a public referendum to amend the city's charter to do so, as the charter required the city to “fund a police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident.”[ The proposed amendment was blocked by the Charter Commission, who said it lacked legal provisions and necessary public input.][
In September, the pledge to abolish the department was set aside. Elected officials said there was widespread disagreement about its meaning, even at the time the pledge was taken. Lisa Bender said that different interpretations of the pledge by different council members had created confusion.] The ''New York Times'' reported that the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city’s progressive politicians had denounced."[ The police abolition efforts culminated in the ]2021 Minneapolis Question 2
The police abolition movement gained momentum in the U.S. city of Minneapolis during protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and culminated in the failed Question 2 ballot measure in 2021 to replace the city’s police department with a pub ...
ballot measure to replace the city’s police department with a public safety department that failed by a 56.2 percent to 43.8 percent vote margin.
The ''New York Times'' described the six-block Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle as an example of police abolition put into practice, because police did not respond to calls in the zone and the local precinct was closed. They reported that the zone had its own self-appointed armed guards, and described cases of harassment and intimidation of businesses and customers, as well as vandalism. Business within the zone crashed. There were four shootings in the zone, two of them fatal, before the police retook the zone.
Activist Albert Corado, whose sister Melyda was killed by police during the 2018 Los Angeles hostage incident
On July 21, 2018, a hostage incident occurred at a Trader Joe's store in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. 28-year-old Gene Evin Atkins, armed and fleeing police, crashed into a utility pole and ran into the nearby store. He fired at ...
, became the first candidate nationwide to run on a police abolition platform when he announced a bid for Los Angeles City Council
The Los Angeles City Council is the legislative body of the Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles in California.
The council is composed of 15 members elected from single-member districts for four-year terms. The President of the Los Angeles City Counc ...
in 2020.
See also
*Abolish ICE
Abolish ICE is a political movement that seeks the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The movement gained mainstream traction in June 2018 following controversy of the Trump administration family separation policy. The m ...
* ACAB, acronym for "All Cops Are Bastards"
*Anti-police sentiment
Anti-police sentiment refers to a social group or individual's attitude and stance against the policing system.
By country Indonesia
The anti-police sentiment has reported to be on the rise in Indonesia in recent years. In 2021, a police offic ...
* Crime in the United States
* Criminal justice reform
*Cure Violence
Cure Violence is a Violence interruption program for anti-violence. It aims to stop the spread of violence in communities by using the methods and strategies associated with public health and disease control: detecting and interrupting conflicts ...
, a public health anti-violence program
*Defund the police
"Defund the police" is a slogan that supports removing funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and o ...
*Overcriminalization
Overcriminalization is the concept that criminalization has become excessive, meaning that an excessive number of laws and regulations deeming conduct illegal have a detrimental effect on society, particularly with respect to victimless crimes an ...
*Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
* Prison abolition movement
* Restorative justice
*Transformative justice
Transformative justice is a series of practices and philosophies designed to create change in social systems. Mostly, they are alternatives to criminal justice in cases of interpersonal violence, or are used for dealing with socioeconomic issues in ...
References
Further reading
*
{{George Floyd protests
Black Lives Matter
Civil rights in the United States
Law enforcement
Police misconduct in the United States
Political movements in the United States
Politics and race in the United States
Race and law in the United States
Urban politics in the United States