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‘Disband, Disempower, and Disarm’: Amplifying the Theory and Practice of Police Abolition

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Abstract

Critical criminologists have challenged the utility of efforts to reform the criminal justice system for decades, including strong calls to abolish the prison system. More recently, the rebellions in Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Charlotte have made racialized police violence and police reform issues of national concern. In this article, we examine abolitionist claims aimed at law enforcement institutions in the aftermath of Ferguson and other subsequent rebellions. We consider the implications for abolitionist organizing when the institution of law enforcement, rather than prisons, becomes the explicit target of our movement(s). How are groups theorizing and practicing police abolition and how does this align with, challenge, or expand past conceptualizations of abolition? To answer this question, first we sketch the broad parameters of abolitionist thought, particularly as it is taken up in the disciplines of political theory and criminology. Second, we analyze an emergent praxis of police abolition that revolves around the call to disband, disempower, and disarm law enforcement institutions. We argue that by attacking the police as an institution, by challenging its very right to exist, the contemporary abolitionist movement contains the potential to radically transform society. In this spirit, we amplify abolitionist praxis that (1) aims directly at the police as an institution, (2) seeks to dismantle the racial capitalist order, (3) adopts uncompromising positions that resist liberal attempts at co-optation, incorporation, and/or reconciliation, and (4) creates alterative democratic spaces that directly challenge the legitimacy of the police.

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Notes

  1. “Abolish the police? Organizers say it’s less crazy than it sounds.” M. Dukmasova (August 25 2016). The Chicago Reader. Retrieved from http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-abolitionist-movement-alternatives-cops-chicago/Content?oid=23289710.

  2. The argument here is not that the rebellions in Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Charlotte “caused” an abolitionist movement to emerge. Rather, we are suggesting that the work of activists in movements around police abolition made much more sense to a broader population after the rebellions. That is, the rebellions changed the broader common sense of how we view police.

  3. Here we follow the lead of two scholars whose recent and forthcoming work examines the trend from prison toward police abolition. The first is Ben Brucato (forthcoming), who is working on a manuscript tentatively titled Race and Police: From Slave Patrols to Mass Incarceration. Brucato argues that abolitionists targeting prison should also, and perhaps first, point to the elimination of policing institutions. The second scholar is Alex Vitale, who recently published The End of Policing (2017), arguing that police are the very problem we must solve.

  4. As an example, we can point to the logic behind John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, where the intent was to incite a mass mobilization that ends slavery. While the attempt failed, it is the strategy that seems relevant here.

  5. Read more about Critical Resistance here: http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language/.

  6. Dual power refers to a strategy to change the world that relies on the creating of independent institutions that meet the needs of the state and challenge its authority. This is unlike nonprofits, which can exist alongside the state.

  7. For a recent example of this body of scholarship, see the special issue in Critical Criminology “Penal abolition and the state: Colonial, racial, and gender violences,” volume 20, 2017.

  8. For example, see Unity and Struggle “Black Liberation, Police, Strategy, White Supremacy: 5 Ways to Build a Movement after Ferguson”, December 14, 2014 http://unityandstruggle.org/2014/12/11/5-ways-to-build-a-movement-after-ferguson.

  9. The Guardian newspaper, as a part of their project “The Counted,” tracks the number of people killed by the police in the United States. This extensive database includes demographic information on each person who died, as well as the location where they were killed. In 2015, the first full year of the project, over one thousand people died at the hands of the police. Black, Brown, and Native Americans were more likely to be killed than whites and Asian/Pacific Islanders. The database is available online here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database.

  10. Disarm NYPD (2016), “About Disarm.” Retrieved from: https://disarmnypd.org/about/.

  11. Afro-pessimism is a theoretical framework that is increasingly being utilized both in the academy and in movement spaces. The arguments put forth by Afro-pessimists must be contended with, even as they are often at odds with the more materialist interpretation of history we have articulated throughout our essay. While it is beyond our scope to fully delineate the points of debate between these two schools of thought (Afro-pessimism and Marxism), we would direct the interested reader to the work of Frank Wilderson, Saidiya Hartman, Jared Sexton, and Steve Martinot.

  12. To read a comprehensive report on “E-carceration” that has just been published by The Center for Media Justice please visit: http://centerformediajustice.org/our-projects/challengingecarceration-electronic-monitoring/.

  13. For a World Without Police, “Disarm.” Retrieved from: http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/the-strategy/disarm/.

  14. For a World Without Police, “Disempower.” Retrieved from: http://aworldwithoutpolice.org/the-strategy/disempower/.

  15. “Our Oakland, Our Solutions,” is archived online here: https://stoptheinjunction.wordpress.com/our-oakland-our-solutions/.

  16. Political theorist Naomi Murakawa has done important work to illuminate this point. In her monograph “The first civil right: How liberals built prison America,” Murakawa (2014) argues that liberals conceptualized racial discrimination in the criminal justice system as an “administrative deficiency.” Consequently, what Murakawa calls “liberal law and order” sought to address racism through the development of supposedly bias free procedures, laws, and policies. “Administrative deracialization,” Murakawa suggests, “legitimized extreme penal harm to African Americans: the more carceral machinery was rights-based and rule-bound, the more racial disparity was isolatable to ‘real’ black criminality” (18).

  17. Critical geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines abandonment as “the rigorously coordinated and organized setting aside of people and resources” (Gilmore qtd. in Gordon 2008: 178). Organized abandonment is a core “characteristic of contemporary [racial] capitalist and neoliberal state reorganization” (Gilmore 2008: 31).

  18. The open letter can be read in its entirety here: https://liftedvoices.org/2015/10/24/stopthecops-a-march-against-the-chiefs-of-police-conference/.

  19. This orientation guide is available online from: http://media.wix.com/ugd/881d51_12abc618efc746b0bc72a4fe47b6c90e.pdf.

  20. The Justice Policy Institute report can be read in full here: http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/rethinkingtheblues_final.pdf.

  21. The Black Youth Project’s “Agenda to Build Black Futures,” which includes more information about divesting from law enforcement, is available online: http://agendatobuildblackfutures.org/our-agenda/.

  22. Again, we would encourage the interested reader to review the important work being done to theorize what the formerly incarcerated activist-scholar James Kilgore, along with others, terms “E-carceration.” A report co-written by Kilgore called “Challenging E-carceration” can be found here: http://centerformediajustice.org/our-projects/challengingecarceration-electronic-monitoring/.

  23. Critical Resistance (2016), “About the Power Projects.” Available online: http://criticalresistance.org/chapters/cr-oakland/the-oakland-power-projects/.

  24. A full transcript of Nia Wilson’s (2016) TED talk is available online: https://www.facebook.com/notes/nia-wilson/the-tedx-durham-talk-safety-ubuntu-the-harm-free-zone/10153892735437872.

  25. For a full description of the Harm Free Zone Project, please see “Kai Barrow’s Daring to Dream: Crafting a Harm Free Zone.” https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-harm-free-zone-transformative-justice-training/kai-barrows-daring-to-dream-crafting-a-harm-free-zone/300537373439477.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Kristian Williams and Alex Vitale for comments and critiques on early drafts. The authors would also like to acknowledge the tireless work of people across the United States who continue the fight for a world without police, prisons, or mass criminalization.

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Correspondence to Meghan G. McDowell.

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McDowell, M.G., Fernandez, L.A. ‘Disband, Disempower, and Disarm’: Amplifying the Theory and Practice of Police Abolition. Crit Crim 26, 373–391 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9400-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-9400-4

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