Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.
This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of policing …
Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.
This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative justice, and harm reduction—has led to a decrease in crime, spending, and injustice. The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing.
If you're already in that camp much of the book will read like preaching to the choir, and it's not exactly a fun read, but it's extremely well researched and provides a ton of insightful background.
Not a quick read by any stretch, it is incredibly dense with information. Well worth the read.
Makes whats going on in policing much more tangible.
good information on the various ways police in the US suck and have always sucked. doesn't have much of an internationalist perspective, which isn't exactly a flaw, it's just beyond the scope of the book.
it might be a good text to radicalize your liberal friends with (so to speak).
Content warning summed up
We hold idealized views of police as good vs evil given their colonial-to-civil-rights social control roots, give them too much unaccountable power (and militarized firepower), and pile societies economic, mental health, and prohibition issues onto them resulting in criminal justice approaches to health and community rebuilding problems. Also, they are expensive, bad at these things, and kill a lot of poor people.
Says and cites what a lot of folks (M. Alexander and E. Hinton certainly) have said more thoroughly, in a solid policy-oriented critique. Policing as it exists today needs to be steeply curtailed, but as part of a fundamental shift in how we view [criminal] justice in this country.
The ebook version of this is free on the Verso (the publisher) website. Go grab it! It's real good. Clear, concise, engaging and really well structured, it lays out with great care how at it's core (and on the surface too, really) policing isn't that different from it's original form as a racist, classist organization at the service of the privileged whose operations, far from reducing crime, mostly help to exacerbate and validate injustices and mishandle society's needs, a nature it's structurally/fundamentally unable to escape from. Dismantle it entirely.
