On Police Abolition
Defining police abolition and defunding
First of all, let’s go over what police abolition is actually about since a lot of people have the misconception that it’s an instantaneous process that will cause every citizen to commit mass murder while shoplifting phones at the local mall, which would cause anarchy, the capital city exploding and the eradication of human race. It’s simply not the case. Abolishing the police is rather a gradual process, involving a reallocation of resources, responsibility and funding, away from the police and towards a community-based model of safety that revolves around prevention, treatment and support. It should be a crisis response unit that is better equipped to deal with crime.
Again, I personally think that rehabilitation is better than punishment, and preventing crime rather than punishing people for it, would be a much better system.
Empirical Evidence
A lot of people think that a system like that would not work, but let’s disprove that by taking a look at empirical evidence. In Eugene, Oregon, 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 2012, Camden, New Jersey — then referred to as “the most dangerous city in the United States” — defunded its police department. The city had numerous problems with police corruption and many instances in which police would plant drugs on citizens. As a result, the city disbanded the police department and created a new one under county control, which 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.
Why Crimes Happen
To expand on that, let’s take a look at why crimes happen, because they sure aren’t random, and would happen way less in other living conditions. Poverty is one of the leading factors relating to crime, whether it’s assault, burglary or theft. Economically disadvantaged people will tend to resort to theft and shoplifting to subsist and fulfill their basic needs.
A study by the International Journal of Social Economics proved that there is a positive co-integrating relationship between poverty and property crime. Regarding violent crime: a low socioeconomic status is thought to have a correlation with higher levels of stress, and therefore the mental and psychological ill-effects of stress. These higher stress levels would probably be correlated positively with the propensity to commit a crime.
Another study by World Bank said, “Crime rates and inequality are positively correlated within countries and, particularly, between countries, and this correlation reflects causation from inequality to crime rates, even after controlling for other crime determinants.”
In Short: Correlation between crime and poverty
In short, property and violent crime rates tend to be higher in low-income areas. It’s not really hard to grasp, and it’s pretty logical that being disadvantaged by the system makes you more desperate and sometimes resort to crime. This would lead me to address systemic racism, however, it’s a topic for another, more concise article.
The System
Now, let’s come back to the topic of defunding the police. Shifting funding away from it and towards services that actually help meet the basic needs of the people committing property crimes in the first place, we could get to a place where we don’t have to shoplift to survive, just to get beat up by a cop and sentenced to six months in jail.
And this whole thing goes beyond police brutality, it’s about how the prison system, the drug war, immigration laws, as well as other policies and culture that form the criminal justice system has caused great damage to humanity. Families have been torn apart, people have been unfairly sentenced, and millions of lives have been unjustly destroyed. The police do not prevent crime, they cause it through the violent disruption of low-income communities. It should not even be surprising, as early policing had little to do with actual crime control, but was performed by volunteer citizens who served as slave patrols. In other countries, it was about defending property, not the people.
Alternatives
Now, let’s take a look at what alternatives could be created as an alternative to the current policing system.
Police officers are more likely to use lethal force when attending to an emergency call when a person is experiencing psychiatric distress. When an individual calls 911 when experiencing mental distress, what they need is expertise in de-escalation, social and health supports & services. Instead, they are met with multiple armed and uniformed police officers. By defunding the police, resources can be reallocated to create new community emergency services to support the mental health needs of our vulnerable community members. Teams trained in de-escalation and who root their work in community-informed practices could provide crisis support and care.
Traffic services are another aspect of this subject, as armed, uniformed officers on the road are unnecessary to the protection of the population. High-speed chases often kill innocent civilians, and there are way better alternatives to that, like civilian services.
Society often assumes that defunding the police would make it more vulnerable to violent crime. But we have to remember that police do not prevent violence. In most incidents of violent crime, police are responding to a crime that has already taken place. When this happens, what we need from the police is a service that will investigate the crime, and perhaps prevent such crimes from occurring in future.
Why Policing Fails
Policing is badly equipped to suit these needs. When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed, and at times refused to take the threat seriously. Why would we rely on an institution that has consistently proven that it is rife with systemic racism and other forms of discrimination that result in some communities being deemed unworthy of support? Instead of relying on the police, we should rely on investigators from other sectors to carry out investigations. Social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, and other well-trained individuals should fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place.
Police intervention into an ongoing violent crime is rare. But, in the event that intervention is necessary while a violent crime is ongoing, a service that provides expert specialized rapid response does not need to be connected to an institution of policing that fails in every other respect. Such a specialized service does not require the billions of dollars we waste in ineffective policing from year to year. An emergency response unit, separate from civilian services, should handle these situations.
Implementation
To wrap this up, let’s talk about how to actually implement this, as it may look good on paper but wouldn’t be feasible without a clear action plan.
Spending on the police by state and local governments jumped from about $10 billion in 1960 to $137 billion in 2018, adjusted for inflation. However, the ever-increasing amount of money spent on policing has borne little relationship to crime rates. The number of crimes rose from 1,887 per 100,000 Americans in 1960 to 5,950 in 1980. Then rates started to decline, falling to 2,580 per 100,000 by 2018. And yet spending has steadily increased throughout that span.
In short, the best plan of action is to greatly cut police funding, direct spending to help and community services, then implement a civilian service that will do a better job at protecting the population. All in all, gradually defunding, and abolishing the police would greatly benefit society.
This is an article I had originally wrote for a YouTube video, here is the link if you wish to watch it instead: https://youtu.be/53hFF4a6-k4
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