Abolishing the Police and Creating an Alternative Really is Possible
In the weeks that have passed since the horrific and intentional murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, and in the wake of the brutally violent crackdown on protesters by police departments across the country, the landscape around police reform work has shifted significantly. Seen as radical and fringe just a couple months ago, demands to defund and abolish the police have very quickly entered mainstream conversations.
In light of these sudden and significant shifts in what is possible with regards to police reform, it is important to explore why it is important and what it means to abolish the police and create a community-centered and non-violent alternative to public safety.
The Shifting Landscape of Police Reform
The demands to defund and abolish police aren’t just topics of discussion, they’ve become practical points of action. In response to protests, the mayor of Los Angeles announced plans to cut $100–150 million from L.A.’s police budget. Members of Portland’s city council want to defund and eliminate a number of police units while community organizations and residents demand at least $50 million in cuts to the police budget.
School districts in cities like Minneapolis, Portland, Denver, Oakland, and Seattle have severed ties with police.
Just last Sunday, a veto proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council announced their intention to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and create a community-centered, non-violent alternative to public safety.
Despite common fears, abolishing the police does not necessarily mean instantly firing all law enforcement officers and sitting back to watch cities descend into chaos. It means we find better ways to solve social problems. The fact is that despite all the cops we do have — despite all the money cities throw at police departments — we still have crime, because policing doesn’t work.
The Violent Nature of Modern Policing
The problem isn’t poor training or lack thereof. We’ve thrown obscene amounts of money into more training, better training, and other failed reforms that don’t strike at the root of the problem. Increasing diversity in police forces has failed to end police violence. Body cameras have failed to prevent police from using excessive force. Anti-bias training has not solved the problem of systemic racism in police institutions with a history rooted in slave patrols and enforcing Jim Crow laws.
The problem is that policing itself is inherently violent and doesn’t work. Our modern concept of policing and public safety is based on the idea that social problems should be solved by people armed with deadly weapons who are granted authority from the government to threaten and actually use violence against people to force their compliance.
If policing itself is inherently violent and is the problem, then what is the alternative that gets rid of that problem and also creates real public safety in our communities?
There isn’t necessarily one single alternative. The solution is not simply replacing police departments with a new law enforcement agency and a public relations makeover. The answer lies changing our priorities and implementing various ideas and policies that reduce our reliance on police by shifting the responsibility for public safety into other programs and practices that don’t rely on violence and force.
Decriminalization and Restorative Justice
An important part of abolishing the police is widespread decriminalization. There are so many laws that artificially create crimes that can and should be solved in ways other than punishment. Through the process of decriminalization, we can reevaluate what we consider to be crimes and how we treat people who engage so-called criminal behavior in our society.
Drugs are a perfect example. If drugs aren’t illegal, then we don’t need police to deal with drug use and sale. We can instead focus our resources and efforts on treating addiction and solving the problems associated with drug addiction instead of just treating people like criminals who deserve punishment.
We know the decades long “War on Drugs” has miserably failed to solve the problem of drug addiction, yet our prisons are filled with people who are guilty of nothing more than drug crimes. There are other tried and tested solutions that actually work. We’ve seen the success Portugal has had in fighting crime and drug addiction through drug decriminalization. We know that in the U.S. good healthcare and access to quality addiction treatment programs significantly reduces drug sales and use as well as crime in general.
Drug laws are not the only area that decriminalization is a viable solution to the problem of policing. There are millions of arrests for low-level offences in the US every year. Why is loitering — literally just hanging out — something police need to be involved with? Loitering laws are rooted in systemic racism. They have a racist history that is closely related to lynching, enforcing racial segregation,and the criminalization of poverty. That by itself speaks volumes about our need to rethink and eliminate the loitering laws that soak up so much time and resources from modern police departments.
Petty theft is another example of crime that could be solved in non-punitive ways that don’t rely on police. Why do people engage in theft? Do they have a job? Does that job pay enough to take care of a family? What other ways can people who engage in theft be helped that aren’t punitive? Arresting people and punishing them clearly has failed to end theft in our society. If someone needs to eat and stealing is their only perceived means, they will steal food even if the threat of jail time exists. And once a person is in the criminal justice system, it can be close to impossible to escape it.
The policing of petty, low-level crime amounts to little more than state-sanctioned harassment that most often targets marginalized and poor communities. If we implement other solutions to low-level crimes, for example restorative justice principles that don’t involve arrest and prison, then we can shift a large amount of the work that police do to other agencies and jobs that are actually helpful and don’t rely on violence.
There are other areas where decriminalization and a shift in the way our society approaches problems and challenges can help us reduce reliance on police. Houselessness and mental health are two examples. If we stop criminalizing houselessness and start providing adequate services, social workers and supportive housing, then we would eliminate half of the work done by institutions like the Portland Police Bureau. We could then significantly reduce the size and budget of the police force while creating real solutions, while creating other jobs for the houseless and getting people into housing so we can truly end houselessness in our city.
If we provide real and substantial mental health services in our city, then people will have an option other than calling police when someone has a mental health episode that puts themselves or others in danger. We know that in Portland and likely in other cities as well, calling the Police when someone has a mental health crisis is often a death sentence.
We don’t need to police sex workers. We need to decriminalize sex work and recognize that sex workers have the same rights and deserve the same respect on the job as any other worker in any other job.
We don’t need police in our schools manufacturing a school-to-prison pipeline. We need more counselors, smaller class sizes, restorative justice policies, and curricula that focus on building critical thinking skills rather than rote memorization and standardized testing. Studies show that programs designed to give at-risk youth access to counseling and cognitive behavioral skill-building have decreased arrests for violent crimes by 50%. Restorative justice, focusing on mediation and face-to-face conversations between victims and offenders has been tremendously successful at Cole Middle school in Oakland where suspensions declined by 87%, and expulsions were eliminated.
Restorative justice is a non-violent, community-centered practice that can and should be used as the primary tool of our justice system in dealing with problems or crimes in our society. We don’t need police, prisons, and punishment. We need to reorganize our society in a way that solves problems rather than making them worse. We need to reorganize our economy to eliminate the massive inequality in our country that is the root of much of the crime that creates a perceived need for so many prisons in our punitively obsessed society.
Violent Crimes, Policing, and Restorative Justice
Violent crimes happen. They can tear families and communities apart. But police generally don’t prevent violent crime, or any crime from taking place. They come in after the fact and investigate crimes. They search for and bring in suspected perpetrators for incarceration, trial, and punishment. But as a general crime prevention mechanism, police are a failure. Police, incarceration, and even capital punishment have all failed to prevent violent crime and keep our communities safe.
We don’t need squadrons of beat cops patrolling and terrorizing communities of color in order to investigate and find violent offenders. We don’t need militarized police armies with tanks and tear gas to bring in murderers and rapists, let alone to show up at rallies and protests starting riots. We can investigate violent crimes and we can use restorative justice practices to create justice in our communities, even in cases that involve violence.
Emergency and Disaster Preparedness
Decriminalization isn’t the only way we can reduce and eliminate reliance on inherently and historically violent police forces. Police departments are also heavily involved in our emergency response systems. There is no reason to believe that this is a necessary arrangement etched forever into the stone of time.
We can provide better community peacekeeping and de-escalation training. We can create community earthquake and disaster plans that give roles traditionally reserved to police to other agencies that aren’t based on the use of force. We can increase mental health support and response, medic, CPR and first aid training, skills, and kits. We can provide communities with Narcan and overdose prevention training. We can teach safety and family network planning, and other skills we need in our communities to prepare for disasters and emergencies. Then we can greatly reduce and eventually even eliminate the need for police during disasters and emergencies. If we can’t find ways to direct traffic that doesn’t use armed police who have a license to kill, then we probably aren’t trying hard enough.
Abolition is Possible
Modern police departments and prisons have only existed for about 150 years, while the history of human civilization dates back hundreds of thousands of years. We don’t really need police.
We actually can abolish the police. We can do it by looking at the roles and functions that police fill in our society, and then figuring out common sense ways to reimagine and refocus that work into other agencies and other jobs that don’t use violence to solve problems. We can do it by shifting our priorities and transforming our society to ensure that no one is left behind, that everyone has enough food, that everyone has good healthcare and comfortable shelter, and that we all have meaningful ways to contribute to our communities.
It may take time and some experimentation, but abolishing the police is possible. It is realistic. It is desperately needed.
