Abolish WHAT? A Primer and Resource Guide on Police & Prison Abolition

Disclaimer: This blog post is a resource developed in the spirit of education, conversation, and information sharing. At the time of publication, the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition has not released a position statement regarding specific policy proposals discussed in this blog.

These actions have spurred a national conversation about the fundamental nature of law enforcement. An institution with well known and well documented beginnings as the slave patrol, many Americans are asking the fundamental question: can this institution ever be expected to establish safety for all, when it was never meant to protect Black lives in the first place?

The discussion about the nature of police and the institution’s fundamental utility seems to be divided into three factions, each dominated by its own school of thought: In the first, police are viewed to be an essential part of any community, and without police forces, cities would see a substantial rise in violent crime and property crime. This camp views the status quo as largely positive, with the exception of a few bad apples who have severely damaged community-law enforcement trust. They recommend additional training for officers, including education on implicit bias and appropriate use of force, and some members of this camp have voiced support for increased accountability that will help to take the bad apples out of the system before they become the next Derek Chauvin.

The second camp seems to acknowledge that the status quo is not great, and that it’s time to make some changes. This faction sees a role for police in our communities – when presented with abolitionist ideas, individuals whose ideology most aligns with this group may ask, “What will people do if someone breaks into their house with a gun? Who are they supposed to call?” or “What about sexual assault? Won’t that go up if there are no police to deter rapists?” At the same time, team number two does express horror at the murder of George Floyd and the frequency with which Black lives are lost through similar police-involved killings. This group has coalesced around the need to reform the police, and the tactics encompassed by reform are featured in a highly publicized campaign called #8cantwait. Released within several days of Floyd’s murder, #8cantwait has been propped up by the media personality Deray, and local and state-level elected officials are reportedly inundated with requests from their constituents to implement the 8 tactics that make up this particular campaign. Included in this approach are these strategies: ban chokeholds and strangleholds; use of force policies; ban shooting at moving vehicles; require use of force continuum; require comprehensive reporting; require de-escalation; require warning before shooting; exhaust all alternatives before shooting. Some have remarked that they are horrified these strategies are not standard practice across law enforcement agencies.

Individuals from camp three, the abolitionists, have been highly critical of #8cantwait and of Deray. This campaign has been criticized as being, “dangerous and irresponsible for offering a slate of reforms that have already been tried and failed, that mislead a public newly invigorated to the possibilities of police and prison abolition, and that do not reflect the needs of criminalized communities.” Deray and Campaign Zero have also been accused of co-opting the language of abolitionists, and the campaign has applied the term Harm Reduction to a number of its strategies, creating a point of concern for individuals across the country whose work is entrenched an understanding of Harm Reduction as something much, much more transformative than political pragmatism and change that is incremental or merely symbolic. In reviewing the Campaign Zero website, a new graphic has debuted that heavily relies on harm reduction and abolition, but provides little context about these concepts and attributes no new tactics to these philosophies.

The abolitionists make up the final thought faction, and their interpretation of the solutions needed in this moment can perhaps be summarized as a counterpoint or response to the second group: The 8cantwait campaign promises to reduce police killings by 72%. At what point will we say that enough is enough? At what point will another loss of Black life be completely unacceptable? So unacceptable that in order to keep our commitment to protecting life, we are willing to invest in changes that are bold and disruptive. The abolitionists recognize that the terminology used to describe their theoretical approach is full of drama and can lead to confusion and fear, but when simplified, is not a unique phenomenon: if the current system of policing does not work, the funding that supports this system may be better allocated elsewhere. Public dollars invested in building support and providing care for Black communities can help to improve health, wellbeing, connectivity, and economic security. A byproduct of such an investment is a drop in crime. In the meantime, many community needs that are handled by police departments can be re-assigned and shifted elsewhere, particularly to community-based institutions that do not have a history that is as intimately tied to slavery and racism. The operative idea here is that policing is not working. In his seminal book, The End of Policing, scholar Alex Vitale writes,

“The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself.”

In this case, we are left with no other choice but to look to other institutions and professionals to fulfill the needs of the community. In response to the #8cantwait campaign, a group of thought leaders from this camp created an alternative campaign, #8toabolition. The strategies named in this campaign can be read in their entirety on the campaign’s website.

In the past two weeks, the overton window has been shifted to an extent that no one would have probably believed to be possible. And as many Americans encounter ideas about police reform and abolition for the first time, it is crucial to remember that these are not new ideas. Abolitionist thought has origins in the scholarship of Black feminist theorists, and leaders of this movement have invested many decades into the belief that a better world is possible.

I am writing about the divisions in the public discourse on policing not because it represents a particular area of expertise for me, but because this is fundamentally a conversation about the concepts of freedom, autonomy, care, support, and justice. It is a conversation about what it means to live in relationship with other human beings – and what commitments we are willing to make to one another. These concepts also lie at the heart of public discourse surrounding drug use, and they create a tie between the Harm Reduction movement and movements that seek to build a stronger apparatus for the provision of safety. Primarily, I am writing about this because of the terrific amount of confusion that exists with regards to the concept of abolition, and its contextual relationships with 8cantwait and police reforms. This is intended to serve as a highly simplistic summary of the differences between reformists and abolitionists, and, most importantly, provide access to information and resources for learning and education. Below I have listed several essential resources, which I am using in order to improve my own knowledge and understanding. IHRC has fostered critical conversations since 2016 – conversations that aim to be honest, real, and open to all. If you’d like to join an active conversation about abolition, you may wish to head over to our instagram account and let us know your thoughts on abolition, reform, and more.

The only resource you’ll ever need: an extraordinarily comprehensive guide to learning about prisons, police, and punishment.

Alex Vitale is a Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College in New York. His 2017 book, The End of Policing, reveals the origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and documents the expansion of police authority. Taking a global perspective, Vitale reviews the many varied forms of policing and explores the alternative systems that communities around the world have created in order to respond to homelessness, sex work, drug use, gang violence, undocumented border crossings, mass shootings, school-based violence, and more.

Vitale’s book is currently available for free in PDF form from the publisher.

For those who aren’t able to invest in reading a full book on the topic, Vitale has given many interviews and published many op-eds in recent weeks:

• Would Defunding the Police Make Us Safer? – via The Atlantic:
• How Much Do We Need the Police? – via NPR
• ‘Defunding the police’ isn’t simply about taking money away, and this book explains it – via SF Gate
• What a World Without Cops Would Look Like – via Mother Jones

Much of the thinking about how communities should respond to this moment lies in the writings of two women and one of their students.

• Angela Davis, the famous activist and scholar, writes about an adjacent but relevant institution in her book, “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a close friend of Davis’ and a slightly less famous contemporary. Her work is profiled in an excellent New York Times Magazine article from 2019
• Finally, Michelle Alexander is a student of Davis and Gilmore, and her now classic book, The New Jim Crow, is a legal history that gives context to the current questions before us regarding what to do with police, prisons, and more.

IHRC welcomes your thoughts and feedback on the concepts presented in these writings at any time. Please get in touch at hello@iowaharmreductioncoalition.org.