. Last tended to <ahref='https://code.incremental.social/thepaperpilot/pages/commit/a894efb9b6b192f7fe057be5879f0687bda6cde7'title='Wed Nov 13 07:23:17 2024 -0600'><timeclass='dt-updated'datetime='Wed Nov 13 07:23:17 2024 -0600'>2024-11-13</time></a>
.</span></p><hr><details><summary>Referenced by:</summary><ahref="/garden/anarchism/index.md">Anarchism</a><ahref="/garden/consensus-democracy/index.md">Consensus Democracy</a><ahref="/garden/my-political-beliefs/index.md">My Political Beliefs</a></details><p>I'm a supporter of the police abolition movement, which calls for police and prisons to be abolished. It argues that there are many inherent problems with policing and incarcerating people that cannot be fixed with just further training or restrictions - the entire system must be entirely abolished. In this way, it is a more extreme version of the police reform or defund the police movements. The movement also posits that there are alternatives to policing and incarceration that can be more effective at reducing crime.</p><h2id="what-is-police-abolition"tabindex="-1">What is police abolition? <aclass="header-anchor"href="#what-is-police-abolition"aria-label="Permalink to "What is police abolition?""></a></h2><p>Just to make sure we're all on the same page as to what police abolition means and involves, I'll be using some definitions from <ahref="https://criticalresistance.org/mission-vision/not-so-common-language/"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">Critical Reach</a>:</p><blockquote><p>The <strong>prison industrial complex (PIC)</strong> is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p><strong>PIC abolition</strong> is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.</p></blockquote><p>I'll generally just say police or prison abolition, but I'm still referring to pieces of PIC abolition.</p><h2id="why-abolish-police"tabindex="-1">Why abolish police? <aclass="header-anchor"href="#why-abolish-police"aria-label="Permalink to "Why abolish police?""></a></h2><p>There are a variety of reasons for abolishing the police, from its controversial origins to its pervasive discrimination to its overall lack of effectiveness. Ultimately though, I would argue this movement stems from anarchistic principles and values. Anarchism posits that no person should hold power over another (a simplification sufficient for this document), which would include the use of force or imprisonment. Anarchists argue the State has no right to exist, let alone that it has no right to call it's violence legitimate. From this premise, any form of policing or incarceration is unjust. However, let's explore additional problems within the specific context of the US:</p><h3id="origins-of-policing"tabindex="-1">Origins of policing <aclass="header-anchor"href="#origins-of-policing"aria-label="Permalink to "Origins of policing""></a></h3><p>The initial implementation of the police in the US was inspired both by the systems they experienced across the pond as well as the bands of <ahref="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-you-start-is-how-you-finish/"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">slave catchers</a> that were present at the time. The fact policing and incarceration as concepts had to be invented and introduced to people who were already existing just fine is telling enough, and the fact they were introduced to bring slaves back to their owners is even more telling. These origins have ingrained racism into the entire system, and they are still evident today when looking at racial profiling, incarceration rates, etc.</p><p>Throughout their history police have, in practice, protected "property" (which slaves were considered to be at the time), not people. In a broader sense, they were a tool of the capitalist elite. That's why the Supreme Court <ahref="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-prote
