It’s a crisis.
- Police killing unarmed citizens
- Police harassing people of color for petty infractions
- People of color and poor people caught in a cycle of petty infractions, fines, failure to be able to pay fines, imprisonment, losing employment because of absences, failure to be able to pay fines...
- Civil forfeiture (legalized police theft)
- People of color and poor people’s behavior more likely to be criminalized, and face much more serious consequences for their behavior than white or more affluent people
- People of color being perceived as more dangerous/threatening by police
- Higher incarcerations rates than anywhere else in the world
This isn’t necessary. Other countries manage to have civil societies without mass incarceration, without police murdering innocent people, without innocent people being blamed for their own murders. Many countries do not have armed police.
Civil police departments are a fairly recent institution. It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that the first organized police departments arose in London and Paris. It’s not a rule of human societies that there must be police. Do we really need them?
Most people quietly go about their lives, without being either perpetrators or victims of crime. I don’t think the absence of police would change this.
I have been robbed, and my home burglarized. Both were traumatic events that left me feeling violated and unsafe. Police weren’t particularly helpful in either case and in neither case my property was recovered.
There would still be murder, assault and rape, but not, I believe, at rates much higher than it is at present. Those who commit these crimes at present do so without regard for the law or police.
I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe without investing so much in policing and incarceration there can be more money available for mental health care, drug interventions, resources for domestic abuse survivors, and community-based conflict resolution.
I don’t don’t even know if it’s possible to dismantle the present institutions. But we don’t seem at all willing to fix them, so I can only propose to dismantle them.