How will we know policing reform is being achieved? - Page 10 - Politics and Society -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

I was the victim of a home invasion recently. I ran away and let them take all of my valuables. I called the police and a social worker showed up to tell me that they had to do it because of historic injustice

People were making racist threats to me outside my home and attacked me when I asked them to stop, so I called the police. They showed up and arrested me

Oh, wait, sorry, are we posting idiotic made-up stories here? I screwed up, then, because what I posted actually happened

Quote

06-21-2020 , 11:04 PM

#227

well named

poorly undertitled

Join Date: Jun 2007 Posts: 78,077

The End of Policing left me convinced we still need policing

Sort of difficult to excerpt, but an interesting read.

Quote:

The police abolition movement has its intellectual roots in the work of African American prison abolitionists Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore and their group Critical Resistance, which in turn took inspiration from the earlier work of the Norwegian sociologist Thomas Mathiesen. But when the conversation turns specifically to the police, many activists and advocates point to the work of Brooklyn College sociologist Alex Vitale, whose 2017 book The End of Policing earned a blurb from Gilmore; its publisher, Verso, has made it available for free in ebook form during the current surge of interest in radical ideas on policing....

Vitale’s main thesis is that, historically and causally speaking, the main origins of police forces were as instruments of social control more than public safety, reflecting various kinds of elite fears about urban working classes, immigrants, and runaway enslaved people. And he sees the problems with policing as too deeply ingrained to be combated with reform.

“The origins and function of the police are intimately tied to the management of inequalities of race and class,” he writes, and “a kinder, gentler, and more diverse war on the poor is still a war on the poor.” He says that “any real agenda for police reform must replace police with empowered communities working to solve their own problems.”

And while the book sketches out some convincing areas in which we could get by with less policing and some promising ideas for social programs that might be more useful instead, you will not find a detailed vision of what those empowered communities are going to do about violent crime. This somewhat cavalier attitude on how we would deal with violent crime in a post-police world is driven by Vitale’s intense skepticism that status quo policing is doing anything to reduce crime. But he doesn’t provide evidence for this proposition.

Quote

06-22-2020 , 12:18 AM

#228

tame_deuces

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 17,817

Well, history can be a help there. In societies with no real organized police force, or so small that it was largely meaningless anyway (both more common throughout history than one might think), it was usually up to citizens to protect themselves. Usually through appointed militias or voluntary militias. Usually for heavily urbanized societies (like the million-citizen cities of antiquity, not the village-sized capitals of medieval times) you saw sizeable numbers officially hired peacekeepers of some sort.

But yeah, the money and resources we spend on law enforcement today in modern societies is a bit of an aberration historically speaking. Then again, many countries decided at some point in the 1800s that all citizen lives were important (at least on paper)- which is also still a bit of an historical aberration.

Of course, you also have clan-based societies, which tend to have a truly outstanding respect for laws and norms within controlled territories... paid for with brutal and violent clashes when things needed correcting. Then again, maybe we can get those cool Mad Max-style cars to go with it?

Quote

06-25-2020 , 11:26 AM

#229

grizy

Carpal \'Tunnel

Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 20,577

Municipal violations funding municipalities

Civil Forfeiture

Bail

Mandatory Minimums

Police Accountability

Notice these videos are all years old.

The Senate bills are disappointing to me because even the Democrat version does virtually nothing on the civil forfeiture and municipal violations front.

There is soooo much focus on the "violence" and "armed" nature of police I think we're forgetting a big part of the problem is the society as a whole has criminalized whole swaths of people.

Last edited by grizy; 06-25-2020 at 11:46 AM.

Quote

06-26-2020 , 01:45 PM

#230

pokerodox

The Situation

Join Date: Nov 2012 Posts: 4,889

Quote:

Originally Posted by well named

The End of Policing left me convinced we still need policing

Sort of difficult to excerpt, but an interesting read.

Great stuff, as usual, wn. Thank you.

More from that article:

"But there’s a substantial literature in economics and sociology arguing that more police on the beat equals less violent crime. One effort to quantify this precisely is a 2018 Review of Economics and Statistics article by Aaron Chalfin and Justin McCrary. It estimates, based on a big set of police and crime data from large and midsize cities between 1960 and 2010, that every $1 spent on extra police generates about $1.63 in social benefits, primarily by reducing murders."

Quote

Page 10 of 10

First

5 6 7 8 9 10

Last

Post Reply Subscribe

...

Page 10 of 10

First

5 6 7 8 9 10

Last