Paperback, 272 pages
Published Aug. 27, 2018 by Verso.
"How the police endanger us and why we need to find an alternative. Recent years have seen an explosion of protest and concern about police brutality and repression--especially after long-held grievances in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in months of violent protest following the police killing of Michael Brown. Much of the conversation has focused on calls for enhancing police accountability, increasing police diversity, improving police training, and emphasizing community policing. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to produce results, because they fail to get at the core of the problem. The problem is policing itself--the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. This book attempts to jog public discussion of policing by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and demonstrating how the expanded role of the police is inconsistent with community empowerment and social justice--even public safety. Drawing on first-hand …
"How the police endanger us and why we need to find an alternative. Recent years have seen an explosion of protest and concern about police brutality and repression--especially after long-held grievances in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in months of violent protest following the police killing of Michael Brown. Much of the conversation has focused on calls for enhancing police accountability, increasing police diversity, improving police training, and emphasizing community policing. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to produce results, because they fail to get at the core of the problem. The problem is policing itself--the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. This book attempts to jog public discussion of policing by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and demonstrating how the expanded role of the police is inconsistent with community empowerment and social justice--even public safety. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, Alex Vitale shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice"--
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.
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.
