 | |
| Author | Geo Maher |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Politics, non-fiction |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
Publication date | August 24, 2021 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781839760075 |
A World Without Police is a book written by historian and political theorist Geo Maher discussing police abolition and what society may look like with a transition from traditional law enforcement agencies to community-based policing. [1]
The author, Geo Maher, became interested in police abolition following the killing of Oscar Grant in 2009. [2] Following the incident, Maher began to teach a course at Vassar College titled "Global Policing, Prisons and Abolition" while working as a visiting associate professor. [2]
In the first chapter, Maher discusses the Kenosha unrest shooting, writing that "self-deputized defenders of property and whiteness have almost always served as a brutal adjunct to the police", saying that American law enforcement agencies have been complicit in such behavior, including with border protection militias and lynch mobs. [3] Citing W. E. B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America where Du Bois wrote that poor white individuals served as a "special police force", Maher says that impoverished whites betrayed their class and oppressed African Americans during the Reconstruction era to maintain a feeling of superiority. [4] Tracing the origins of law enforcement in the United States to the slave patrols and strike breaking groups, Maher states that "American policing has always been about two things at once ... racist fear and economic profit." [1] With the latter, the author writes: "Police embodied the division of the poor and in their practical function they uphold that division every day, patrolling the boundaries of property and that most peculiar form of property that is whiteness." [3]
Later, Maher writes that police in the United States have no legal obligation to protect the public, citing multiple federal court verdicts; in particular the author details how following the Parkland high school shooting, a court ruling determined that the local sheriff was not required to protect school students. [3] He also examines data that shows that police in modern times does not prevent or reduce crime in a significant measurement, featuring a statement from David H. Bayley; "one of the best kept secrets of modern life ... police do not prevent crime." [1] [3] Regarding police reform, Maher notes that diversity in policing, police body cams and other initiatives have actually worsened police performance. [3] Citing the Urban Institute, Maher says that "state and local spending on the police increased astronomically between 1977 and 2017, from $42 billion to $115 billion" without taking into account inflation and that over this period the militarization of police has increased. [5]
Focusing on capitalism's relation to imperialism, the book delves into how United States policy forces individuals from their native nations and criminalizes them for illegal immigration. [3] [5] Maher writes that "the policing of imperial power has developed in conjunction with the domestic policing of colonized and formerly enslaved populations", criticizing the United States as a global policeman. [3]
Finally, the book covers potential alternatives to traditional police forces. [3] Maher suggests focusing on grassroots community safety groups, promoting restorative justice and funding after school programs. [1] [3] To achieve such an end to the established policing system, Maher says that an end of capitalism is required. [3]
Publishers Weekly describes A World Without Police as a "provocative and well-researched polemic", writing in conclusion that "[t]hough some readers will take issue with Maher’s fiery language, his ample evidence and firm convictions make a persuasive case. This is an essential introduction to the case for abolishing the police." [1] In NPR, historian Kamil Ahsan writes that "Geo Maher's vision may not get readers to see past the horizon into a world without police—but it is as convincing as any book can be that we must at least try." [3] Kirkus Reviews says that A World Without Police is "[a] thesis sure to stir plenty of controversy but worthy of discussion." [5]
Christian Noakes of Workers World wrote that the book "is both one of the most compelling arguments for police abolition and a complete depiction of the nationwide George Floyd uprisings" and that it is bolstered "by extensive historical documentation and journalistic rigour." [6]
Anarcho-capitalism is an anti-statist, libertarian political philosophy and economic theory that seeks to abolish centralized states in favor of stateless societies with systems of private property enforced by private agencies, based on concepts such as the non-aggression principle, free markets and self-ownership. In the absence of statute, anarcho-capitalists hold that society tends to contractually self-regulate and civilize through participation in the free market, which they describe as a voluntary society involving the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In a theoretical anarcho-capitalist society a system of private property would still exist, and would be enforced by private defense agencies and/or insurance companies that were selected by property owners, whose ownership rights or claims would be enforced by private defence agencies and/or insurance companies. These agencies or companies would operate competitively in a market and fulfill the roles of courts and the police, similar to a state apparatus. Some anarcho-capitalist authors have argued that voluntary slavery is compatible with anarcho-capitalist ideals.
The prison abolition movement is a network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation and education that do not focus on punishment and government institutionalization. The prison abolitionist movement is distinct from conventional prison reform, which is intended to improve conditions inside prisons.
Campus police or university police in the United States and Canada are sworn police or peace officers employed by a college or university to protect the private or public property of the campus and surrounding areas and the people who live, work, and visit it. In instances where they are not technically police officers, they are often known as campus safety or campus security.
As of 2020, more than 900,000 sworn law enforcement officers have been serving in the United States. About 137,000 of those officers work for federal law enforcement agencies.
Abolitionism or abolitionist veganism is the animal rights based opposition to all animal use by humans. Abolitionism intends to eliminate all forms of animal use by maintaining that all sentient beings, humans or nonhumans, share a basic right not to be treated as properties or objects. Abolitionists emphasize that the production of animal products requires treating animals as property or resources, and that animal products are not necessary for human health in modern societies. Abolitionists believe that everyone who can live vegan is therefore morally obligated to be vegan.
Police brutality is the use of excessive or unwarranted force by law enforcement against civilians. Police brutality involves physical or psychological harm to a person and can involve beatings, killing, intimidation tactics, racist abuse, and torture.
Community policing or community-oriented policing (COP) is a strategy of policing that focuses on developing relationships with community members. It is a philosophy of full-service policing that is highly personal, where an officer patrols the same area for an extended time and develops a partnership with citizens to collaboratively identify and solve problems.
On July 18, 2016, Charles Kinsey, a behavior therapist, was shot in the leg by a police officer in North Miami, Florida. Kinsey had been retrieving his 27-year-old autistic patient, Arnaldo Rios Soto, who had run away from his group home. Police encountered the pair while they were searching for an armed suicidal man. Kinsey was lying on the ground with his hands in the air, and trying to negotiate between officers and his patient, when he was shot. The officer who shot Kinsey said he had been aiming at the patient, who the officer believed was threatening Kinsey with a gun. Both Kinsey and his patient were unarmed.
George Ciccariello-Maher, also known as Geo Maher, is an American political scientist who was an associate professor of politics and global studies at Drexel University.
Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for decarceration in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000, resulting in the United States no longer having the highest incarceration rate in the world, but still remaining in the top five.
Copaganda is propaganda efforts to shape public opinion about police or counter criticism of police and anti-police sentiment.
The George Floyd protests were a series of riots and demonstrations against police brutality that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The protests and civil unrest began in Minneapolis as reactions to the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed African American man, by city police during an arrest. They spread nationally and internationally. Veteran officer Derek Chauvin was recorded as kneeling on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds; Floyd complained of not being able to breathe, but three other officers looked on and prevented passers-by from intervening. Chauvin and the other three officers involved were later arrested. In April 2021, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. In June 2021, Chauvin was sentenced to 22+1⁄2 years in prison.
The police abolition movement is a political movement, mostly active in the United States, that advocates replacing policing with other systems of public safety. Police abolitionists believe that policing, as a system, is inherently flawed and cannot be reformed—a view that rejects the ideology of police reformists. While reformists seek to address the ways in which policing occurs, abolitionists seek to transform policing altogether through a process of disbanding, disempowering, and disarming the police. Abolitionists argue that the institution of policing is deeply rooted in a history of white supremacy and settler colonialism and that it is inseparable from a pre-existing racial capitalist order, and thus believe a reformist approach to policing will always fail.
In the United States, "defund the police" is a slogan that supports removing funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources. Activists who use the phrase may do so with varying intentions; some seek modest reductions, while others argue for full divestment as a step toward the abolition of contemporary police services. Activists who support the defunding of police departments often argue that investing in community programs could provide a better crime deterrent for communities; funds would go toward addressing social issues, like poverty, homelessness, and mental disorders. Police abolitionists call for replacing existing police forces with other systems of public safety, like housing, employment, community health, education, and other programs.
Alex S. Vitale is an American author and professor of sociology at Brooklyn College. He is also the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, The Appeal, USA Today, Vice News, and other media outlets. Vitale is the author of The End of Policing (2017), which argues for the abolition of police.
Racial capitalism is a concept reframing the history of capitalism as grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities, typically from Black people. It was described by Cedric J. Robinson in his book Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, published in 1983, which, in contrast to both his predecessors and successors, theorized that all capitalism is inherently racial capitalism, and racialism is present in all layers of capitalism's socioeconomic stratification. Jodi Melamed has summarized the concept, explaining that capitalism "can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups", and therefore, for capitalism to survive, it must exploit and prey upon the "unequal differentiation of human value."
The End of Policing is a 2017 book by the American sociologist Alex S. Vitale. In it, Vitale argues for the eventual abolition of the police, to be replaced variously by decriminalization or with non-law enforcement approaches, depending on the crime. Vitale argues that the function of police is to uphold inequalities of class, gender, race, or sexuality.
Derecka Purnell is an American lawyer, writer, and organizer. She is best known for her 2021 memoir Becoming Abolitionists, which received positive reviews from Boston Review, PEN America, Kirkus, The Guardian, and others.
Are Prisons Obsolete? is a 2003 book by Angela Y. Davis that advocates for the abolition of the prison system. The book examines the evolution of carceral systems from their earliest incarnation to the modern prison industrial complex. Davis argues that incarceration fails to reform those it imprisons, instead systematically profiting from the exploitation of prisoners. The book explores potential alternatives to the prison system that could transform the justice system from a punitive instrument of control and retribution into a tool capable of changing lives for the better through a combination of autobiography and academic examination. It is a core text in the prison abolition movement.
Savage Tongues is a 2021 novel by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi.