Mariame Kaba

Two seasoned activists make a convincing case for defunding the police.

As Kaba and Ritchie note, defunding “means investing the billions currently poured into policing and the prison-industrial complex into community-based safety strategies: meeting basic needs that include housing, health care, access to care for disabled people, childcare, elder care, a basic guaranteed income, and accessible, sustainable living-wage jobs.” The authors use three main arguments. First, they show how policing endangers, rather than protects, America’s most vulnerable communities. Second, they claim that calls for reforming the police—rather than abolition—are futile because the inherent violence of policing makes it impossible to reform. Finally, they argue that there are more effective ways to promote safety. “We call for abolition of police because, despite all of the power, resources and legitimacy we pour into them, they cannot and will not deliver safety,” they write. Kaba and Ritchie begin by showing how police manufacture crimes by focusing on making most of their arrests in certain “hot spots”—which, they argue, is code for brown and Black neighborhoods—while ignoring others. This perpetuates a culture of “fearmongering” that politicians use to divert funds to police and away from social services programs that have been proven to prevent violence. The authors urge a shift to an “abundance mindset,” in which the government stops using resources to punish marginalized populations and instead uses them to meet every American’s needs. Furthermore, they urge us to listen to survivors, who often encounter violence in the very systems that are allegedly set up to protect them. Kaba and Ritchie are knowledgeable, passionate, and skilled at elucidating complex concepts clearly, without sacrificing nuance. The book is deeply researched and flawlessly argued, and the plan they lay out is practical, compassionate, and circumspect.

A brilliantly articulated plan to abolish the police.

-Kirkus Review… (more)

I am about as far away from the target audience for this book as it is possible to be: I am white, male and British. I therefore wish to be cautious about gainsaying the arguments made. I do understand that the US have a privately owned prison system and even more problems with ethnic and sexual minority groups than we have in the UK but, the logic of this book seems a little naïve.

I am in total agreement that better treatment of people on the edge of society would lead to a large fall in the number of criminals. Some of the stories used as evidence in this book are truly horrendous and change is certainly needed but, I cannot foresee a time when society in general will be improved by ALL criminals retaining their freedom.

I do not feel empowered to discuss the US police force, but certainly British police have issues upon which they should hang their heads in shame: the miners' strike showed how the police could be used as a private army to carry out some disgusting actions, both in the attacks upon miners but also in the way moles were parachuted into communities and entered relationships with the locals.

As I have already said, I am white so, I don't have direct experience of racial bias - both overt and subconscious, but I am convince that both are not only historically true, but continue to this day. We hear less of it, but there is almost certainly still a sexual bias...why wouldn't there be when it is still true in society generally?

These issues are the tip of an iceberg, many of which I am probably unaware thanks to my privileged position. It goes without saying, that we must find methods to alleviate and eventually eradicate them but the idea that a society without some form of enforceable law and order could run smoothly is one that I struggle to believe.… (more)