Abstract
Debates about policing in the United States reached a fever pitch in 2020 after the tragic killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police. While police violence is not new, and the killing of civilians by police continues unabated, the terms of debate and arguments about what is to be done have changed. As is documented in No More Police: A Case for Abolition, efforts to reform the police date back to 1894 and there have been continual periods of reform since then. Reform has long been the central focus of “fixing” the police but the historic uprisings of 2020 combined with years of organizing and scholarship have brought police abolition closer to the center of debate. No More Police, written by longtime organizers and scholars Mariame Kaba and Andrea Richie, makes the case for an end to the reform era and for the abolition of police, and policing more broadly. No More Police endeavors to change the common sense about police and policing, and in doing so, also asks the profession of social work to reconsider our relationship to these forces as well.
Their case for the abolition of police rests on three central arguments. The first is that police do not create public safety, they prevent it. They argue that rather than preventing and interrupting violence and harm, the police are contributors to violence both in their direct enactment of violence against people, and through the capturing of public resources that could be used for things like education, housing, and healthcare. Their second argument is that the police cannot be reformed because violence is fundamental to the institution of policing. Kaba and Richie assert that police are, and have always been, violence workers, using legally protected force or the threat of force to get people to obey. Finally, No More Policing contends that safety can be created without police and policing. A considerable portion of the book is focused on advancing safety beyond policing and exploring the ideological, cultural, institutional, relational, and practice shifts that are necessary to get there.
This book challenges the idea that policing equal public safety and makes a compelling case for how the abolition of police can bring more safety than the status quo. Discourse about the abolition of police can invoke a range of responses, from outright disagreement with the idea, to fear that the absence of policing will mean more violence, to curiosity about how this would actually happen, and what would come if the police were abolished. While this text is not aimed at vehement critics of abolition, it is a primer for those who are curious or already inclined towards the visions and praxis of abolition, and social justice more broadly. Their explanation of the “how” of police abolition is convincing and offers a multifaceted approach that will take time, organizing, and significant and continual change. Their strategies for police abolition include changing the public discourse about public safety, uprooting copaganda and the ways in which cops live in the heads and hearts of individuals, supporting people and communities in identifying what actually will make them safe, redistributing public resources to meet material needs, challenging surveillance, policing, and incarceration in all forms, and experimenting and building approaches to safety that are rooted in Black feminism, collective care, and collective governance.
In addition, No More Police cautions that efforts to reduce the size and power of the police often reproduce the core logics of policing, which they define as “the control and regulation of access to safety, resources, and space to enforce relations of power” (page 140). Their cautioning highlights social work as one of the primary institutions that have reproduced policing, and challenges the profession to change its common sense, and its practices. Their chapter “No Soft Police” narrows in on social policy, social work, and other helping professions and illuminates how these institutions have adopted or reinforced policing logics. They argue that efforts to replace the police with social workers, or counselors, run the risk of maintaining or expanding the practice of policing, while obscuring the structural transformation and resource redistribution necessary for lasting safety. No More Police insists that efforts for abolition must go beyond assigning social problems to someone else (like social workers) and somewhere else (like a treatment facility), and that instead social work must prioritize transforming structural conditions and social relations that cause these problems in the first place, including uprooting policing in all of its forms.
