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Important contribution to the police debate by @pat_sharkey in the @washingtonpost. He writes about research and local initiatives to describe a community-led safety. There are great ideas here, but I want to push on some of them. 1/n https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/12/defund-police-violent-crime/?arc404=true
Pat leads with research that shows more police reduces crime. Academic research calculates marginal effects: a 1 percent increase in the number of cops reduces crime by x percent. But the police critics are making a different point… 2/n
When police are said to be harmful, this refers to the whole institution, not the effects of change at the margin. Designing and operating the whole institution to support the safety and well-being of Black communities would mitigate harmful effects… 3/n
Which gets us to counterfactuals. Police research asks what happens to crime if we had more cops, and changed nothing else. Defunding is about changing everything else: A new reality where communities of color had public investment like affluent white communities… 4/n
Pat’s call for community-led safety is in line with the call for community investment that is the other side of the defunding coin, so I see alignments here with the argument to defund. Pat and @elizabhinton have some similar ideas here. But… 5/n https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/opinion/george-floyd-protests-1960s.html
Residents particularly of low-income Black communities deal with what @monicacbell calls “legal estrangement,” a sense that institutions are organized to exclude and marginalize. This isn’t just about crime, this is about political capacity… 6/n https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/du-bois-review-social-science-research-on-race/article/community-in-criminal-justice/533413EC7BEE4C6D5A8D357448C7F1A0
The remedy for legal estrangement goes beyond building trust in police. How can you trust an institution that works to cut you off from the whole structure of opportunities enjoyed by white America. Overcoming legal estrangement means shifting the balance of power...7/n
Change should be empowering, helping to organize and mobilize. Many community programs – e.g., summer jobs, credible messengers – could go much further in this direction. The great work of @A_S_Alexander at @justcitydetroit is an example of this empowering kind of work…
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Police: They don’t just provide government services. They’re political institutions reflecting society's balance of power. When police use their monopoly over legitimate violence in their own self-interest to brutalize protesters, this is a breathtaking offense to democracy… 8/n
Police, like any state agency in a democracy, should answer to elected officials, and ultimately to the community. The question is not the size of the police department or whether we have one, but can state violence be organized to be democratically accountable… 9/n
American democracy is under existential stress right now, protesters and advocates are trying to reclaim it. For me, this is the yardstick for measuring change: do new community investments or police policy invigorate democracy and transfer power to communities… 10/n
Many of these ideas grow out of @square1justice, a project that has benefited from the superb work of @patsharkey, @monicacbell, @A_S_Alexander, @elizabhinton, and many others. https://squareonejustice.org EOF
