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The End of Policing

Alex S. Vitale

4.22 · Rating details · 5,449 ratings · 956 reviews

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce resul ...more

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Kindle Edition, 272 pages

Published October 10th 2017 by Verso

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Jun 04, 2020 Thomas rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, own-physical

Such an unfortunately relevant and timely book with the ongoing police brutality and militarization of police against protestors in the United States. The End of Policing shows that instead of police reform we should strive to eliminate the police state itself, given its role in maintaining anti-blackness. Alex Vitale walks us through the necessary steps to help us see why we should do away with the police instead of trying to reform them. He highlights how many of us, especially white and non-b ...more

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Nov 22, 2017 Onyango Makagutu rated it really liked it

Demilitarize the police. Reduce policing. Build more humane societies. End war on drugs and on terror. Heck, just do away with the fucking police.

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Jun 02, 2020 Sarah Ames-Foley rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, politics, social-justice, race, history, criminal-justice

PSA: The ebook version of this is currently FREE on the publisher's website and can be delivered in multiple formats!

A kinder, gentler, and more diverse war on the poor is still a war on the poor.

this is a really great primer on criticisms of the police as well as alternatives. the book has 10 parts and covers topics such as the school-to-prison pipeline, race, homelessness, sex work, and the war on drugs. it was really helpful to see such a breadth of topics laid out, as it is clear that the cu ...more

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Jul 23, 2020 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2020, recs

swiftly overviews the many failings of the American police, an institution that has since its beginning helped uphold a racist, classist social order through the threat and use of violence, and even more so since the collapse of the Sixties’ great social movements and the start of the War on Drugs, after which cops were rapidly militarized and called upon to ramp up the surveillance and incarceration of Black lives. across a series of succinct, stats-heavy chapters, Vitale breaks down how cops p ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Roy Lotz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: americana, art-of-compromise

A kinder, gentler, and more diverse war on the poor is still a war on the poor.

Like many white Americans, I was complacent about the problem of police violence for many years. I figured that there would always be tragic accidents, always a few bad officers, and that we must make allowances for people doing what is, no doubt, a very difficult job. My attitude started to change when I left the country, and realized that the levels of police violence and incarceration in America are exceptional ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 Mara rated it really liked it

Shelves: subscription, recommended-to-me, ebook-owned, audio

This is a book that genuinely opened up my mind to a new way of imagining what is possible. Vitale's book is a compelling argument from history, sociological data, and lived experience that the police (at least as it is currently understood) cannot be reformed enough to overcome the abuses that they continue to perpetuate. As Vitale's argument turns from one area of life to the next, I was struck by how law enforcement officers with weapons are to address the problems they are called in to fix a ...more

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May 14, 2018 Avery rated it liked it

Shelves: political-theory, prison

As a sociological study, this book succeeds spectacularly. As a political manifesto, not so much. The value of this book derives primarily from its extensive research, data, and statistics. Vitale presents astonishing facts & figures about policing that I had never heard before. The book successfully proves that policing in the United States fails at both its stated purposes as well as generally maintaining a safe and functioning society. What the police instead excel at is institutional racism, As a sociological study, this book succeeds spectacularly. As a political manifesto, not so much. The value of this book derives primarily from its extensive research, data, and statistics. Vitale presents astonishing facts & figures about policing that I had never heard before. The book successfully proves that policing in the United States fails at both its stated purposes as well as generally maintaining a safe and functioning society. What the police instead excel at is institutional racism, repression, and social control.

Where the book falls short is that Vitale normalizes certain social categories that he studies in relation to policing. This stands out most in his discussion of homeless people, people with mental illnesses, and sex workers (the latter he sadly frequently refers to as 'prostitutes'). He takes as a given that these three groups are social pariahs that must be dealt with, thus reifying the very logic that justifies their oppression at the hands of the police state. A choice quote:

Even the best-behaved people become an eyesore when living outside. Urinating and sleeping in public are both unavoidable and criminalized, creating a terrible dynamic. It is also true that not all homeless people are well behaved. Mental illness and substance abuse contribute to disorderly and illegal behaviors that disrupt communities in ways that can make public spaces inhospitable and, in rare cases, dangerous. (pg. 93)

The second flaw, not unrelated to the first, is that Vitale seems to take both capitalism and the state as a given when proposing alternatives. This may be advantageous in dealing with liberal interlocutors, but it leaves much to be desired if one wants to really imagine what it means for society to move beyond policing as a social institution, something difficult to imagine under a capitalist regime. Vitale proposes that budgets be redirected from policing to schooling, community resources, and other social programming. Hardly a bad idea, but illustrates definite illusions about the function of the state in capitalist society.

File under: useful analysis steeped in capitalist realism. ...more

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Jun 17, 2019 Kaelan Ratcliffe▪Κάϊλαν Ράτκλιφ▪كايِلان راتكِليف rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: civilisation-critique-of, capitalism, history, corporation, colonialism-imperialism, politics, civil-rights-movement-black-liberat, police

Uncompromising Institutional Analysis

There came a point, about halfway through this book, where the full gravity of the situation of American policing hit me like a frieght train. The truth is, the police are used to solve everything in American society. They are used as a bludgeon; a hammer to smash back into place those who have found themselves on the flipside of society; its underbelly. Another term one might use for this phenomena is a 'militaristic' society. Vitales work here is so imp Uncompromising Institutional Analysis

There came a point, about halfway through this book, where the full gravity of the situation of American policing hit me like a frieght train. The truth is, the police are used to solve everything in American society. They are used as a bludgeon; a hammer to smash back into place those who have found themselves on the flipside of society; its underbelly. Another term one might use for this phenomena is a 'militaristic' society. Vitales work here is so important as he chooses to take a holistic approach to this subject by looking at the Police as an institution. If society is overwhelmingly made up of the push and pull of various environmental pressures different groups / governments / insitutions work on one another, then where do the Police fit into this? What function do they serve? These are the most important questions that need answering.

So while Vitales may bring up certain issues and points of example (acts of police brutality), ultimately they are only used to explain what the end result looks like when the Police are set up in a particular environmental context. Not only this, but he shows - quite early into the book - the ideas that influence the police (see: broken window policing) and the trickle down affect on society these ideas have. Not surprisingly, most of these ideas have come from individuals who flirt with eugenic concepts and see society, and the peoples who inhabit it, as inately a certain way. The proof provided being the physical acts / conditions the people under scrutiny are doing / in. A cyclical and irrational view; it has been very effective nonetheless.

The reader will find each chapter discusses a basic principle: a failing area of society which should be being dealt with through a plethora of means, which is instead being solved by the use of police (synonym: force). The author discusses: history, tactics, results, and, finally, alternatives. I should warn readers that some of the alternatives are laughable. Not because the author is stupid in suggesting them, but because when viewed alongside other countries they don't even approach radical. Which in itself shows the problems American society faces today, and for the coming future.

I must add I even discovered how some ideas travelled across the Atlantic from my country in the UK. Vitales opened some interesting history about the London Met. I never knew about. Worth a read unto itself. ...more

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Jun 14, 2020 Sleepless Dreamer rated it really liked it

Like most people, I've been watching the protests in the states and hearing the calls to abolish the police. At first, I felt like it was merely a rhetoric device meant to get the point across. I mean, I didn't even spend much time considering someone would think about just getting rid of the police, especially in America where the crime rate is so high.

That's where this book comes in and that's exactly why it's so important. Systematically and carefully, Vitale analyzes the role of the police, ...more

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Sep 11, 2018 Meriam Mabrouk rated it liked it

This is a timely book that discusses policing in an accessible way in its variable forms: border policing, policing of communities of colour, policing of sex workers, drugs, schools and so on. I found the book interesting in the sense that it specifically points out problems with policing in the US, problems with the existing frameworks of reform, and alternative ways of thinking to counter them.

However, the book starts out with explaining how reforming the police is in itself a problem because This is a timely book that discusses policing in an accessible way in its variable forms: border policing, policing of communities of colour, policing of sex workers, drugs, schools and so on. I found the book interesting in the sense that it specifically points out problems with policing in the US, problems with the existing frameworks of reform, and alternative ways of thinking to counter them.

However, the book starts out with explaining how reforming the police is in itself a problem because of its nature and its essence in perpetuating an 'us versus them' perception of economically and socially marginalised communities. However, as the book progresses, we find two contradictory arguments. In the first one, policing is itself a problem as issues that should be solved within the community are handed to the police state and its agenda. In the second argument, policing doesn't have to fully disappear as long as the goals of the police change and funding is put into healthcare, education, and job training programmes instead of police operations.

Another critique of the arguments in this book is that it veers towards viewing policing as a US problem rather than a global problem, through focusing on juxtapositions that run the risk of undermining the equally dangerous nature of borders in other advanced capitalist countries, or countries in the Global South (Algeria and Morocco stand out as prime examples regarding Syrian refugees, sub-Saharan migrants, and the Western Sahara conflict). For instance, in the chapter of Border Policing, he makes the argument that in the US, anti-migrant sentiment is the embodiment of a fear of migrants leading up to the collapse of American economy and culture. He states that this is unfounded and takes the European Union as an example of good migration, in which opening up the border between different parts of Europe still kept the local cultures intact and contributed to the development of poorer European countries.

This argument is Euro/American-centric and problematic as it contributes to the erasure of various migrant experiences and the inherent violence of borders specifically towards non-European people, who are ironically both viewed as lazy and threatening. This argument also does not recognise the varying levels of whiteness and the impact they have on the ways in which white, European migrants within Europe experience borders.

Secondly, viewing the entirety of Europe as evenly developed is delusional at best, and viewing development in an economistic, GDP-centric point of view, and applying it to European borders, overlooks the multi-dimensional aspects of development, such as equal access to healthcare, free education, human rights as an umbrella terms for the rights of all marginalised peoples, and workers' rights. European borders (or any borders for that matter) are hardly an example of success as the Greek saga of capitalism unfolds further, when refugees are left to die, and asylum seekers and migrants deported. I would still recommend this book despite its failings, as it makes several good arguments and offers interesting historical accounts. ...more

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Jun 13, 2020 Chris rated it liked it

That the first line of the conclusion of a book entitled The End of Policing is "Policing needs to be reformed" admittedly made me smile. While clearly intended as part of a rhetorical device, with the author then going on to briefly summarise why reform does not work and how we need to move beyond that, it is indicative of a wider problem with the book and neatly sums up my overall frustration with it.

The End of Policing is a helpful resource setting out the evidence of how policing is oppress That the first line of the conclusion of a book entitled The End of Policing is "Policing needs to be reformed" admittedly made me smile. While clearly intended as part of a rhetorical device, with the author then going on to briefly summarise why reform does not work and how we need to move beyond that, it is indicative of a wider problem with the book and neatly sums up my overall frustration with it.

The End of Policing is a helpful resource setting out the evidence of how policing is oppressive, discriminatory and, perhaps the main focus of the book to my mind, counter-productive if you accept the claim that its aim is public safety. It's full of well-sourced examples of where policing fails to provide public safety and how in many cases it makes people less safe – and not just the poorer, often racialised communities that it typically targets but the wealthier, largely white populations as well. This is useful.

However, across the book, the author confusingly mixes in cautiously approving commentary on reforms, potential and actual, alongside evidence that reform isn't enough. I imagine the intention was to demonstrate what the conclusion argues, that reform is ultimately never enough despite intentions and often in fact strengthens the system. But it just makes the point confusing.

It never really sticks its neck out for the title, which ends up seeming more of a stark, marketable title from the publisher's perspective rather than the actual thrust of the text. The worst example of this confusion is when the author talks about the British police in comparatively favourable terms to the US police, including providing a statistic without a footnote that is demonstrably false and paints the British police in a far better light than reality. The author claims that the British police have only killed fifty people since 1900, but since 2004 alone there have been at least 40 fatal shootings by the police documented in the UK. And this is just shootings, not including deaths through restraint (e.g. Sheku Bayoh) or other uses of physical force, or other deaths in custody without a clear cause. Even if we assume it's a typo on the year, it still makes no sense and is not borne out by any evidence I can find – and as I said, there's no footnote, the footnote close to it just provides US statistics, which makes me concerned about other assertions in the book.

Reforms (yes, again) in the UK relating to police mental health outreach teams are also mentioned favourably, without looking into the enormous problems related to interactions between the police and those experiencing mental health problems in the UK.

Overall, it's a useful book to read to get an overview of some of the problems and their history. It would likely open the eyes of many people who assume that policing is broadly well-intentioned, generally carried out with public safety in mind and that we would be much less safe without it.

But over and above its dangerous naivety with regards to policing outside of the US, it falls down on both clearly advocating for the end of policing and, importantly, drawing a clear distinction between the prospects for reform and the urgency of radical transformation implied by the explicitly abolitionist title. ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Hadrian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics-and-foreign-policy, nonfiction, social-justice

Policing needs to be reformed. We do indeed need new training regimes, enhanced accountability, and a greater public role in the direction and oversight of policing. We need to get rid of the warrior mindset and militarized tactics. It is essential that police learn more about the problems of people with psychiatric disabilities. Racist and brutal police officers who break the law, violate the public trust, and abuse the public must be held to account. The culture of the police must be change
...more

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Jun 18, 2020 Morgan M. Page rated it liked it

Alex Vitale is right when he - on the cover - explains, "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." The End of Policing has all the right takeaways about policing in America and why it needs to be abolished, but unfortunately slips when it comes to the finer details. And to b ...more

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Jun 03, 2020 anna (½ of readsrainbow) marked it as to-read

Shelves: 2-authors-of-color, pub-2017, nonfiction

the ebook is free on the pub's site rn: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817... ...more

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Aug 14, 2020 Daniel Teehan rated it it was ok

2.5 stars. Would not recommend this mealy mouthed, largely uninspiring work by a liberal flirting with a radical tradition he doesn't seem to understand. In thinking about this book I was tempted to say, yknow it has a pretty flawed ideological groundwork that is evident in many examples (truly many, see below), but at least it's a good entry point to police abolition for people who need a safer/more accessible on ramp, but actually fuck that.

I think what this book actually does is offer libera 2.5 stars. Would not recommend this mealy mouthed, largely uninspiring work by a liberal flirting with a radical tradition he doesn't seem to understand. In thinking about this book I was tempted to say, yknow it has a pretty flawed ideological groundwork that is evident in many examples (truly many, see below), but at least it's a good entry point to police abolition for people who need a safer/more accessible on ramp, but actually fuck that.

I think what this book actually does is offer liberals a way to talk about defunding the police without engaging at all with the Black feminist and anti-capitalist movements from which police and prison abolition emerged. It offers the semblance of academic merit (he's a professor, and kind of cites to academic work) for people who need respectability and credentials for their political beliefs. But to be clear, this is NOT an academic work in any meaningful sense I can tell. It reads much more like a series of Vox articles, with several references to academic and book-length journalistic works but very little in the way of methodology or rigor.

Which would be fine! If this was actually a thoughtful introduction to the theory of police abolition. but it isn't. I will say there is some helpful historicizing of the emergence of police forces from slave patrols, labor suppression, and imperial projects, largely in the second chapter. And again, this is a moment where it's tempting to say, well this is actually a useful resource for grounding people in a historical connection they otherwise wouldn't accept? But I don't think that argument actually holds for two reasons - one, I don't see anyone who is not already amenable to police abolition being persuaded by his writing, which again is not very compelling even to me, a self-identified abolitionist. And two, why would we encourage anyone looking to engage with abolitionist concepts to learn those concepts from a confused liberal white professor writing in 2017 rather than the radical anti-capitalist Black women and men who have been writing about these ideas for LITERAL decades. To offer this work as an "accessible" introduction to abolition makes it very clear whose access and what norms are being privileged when we have these conversations.

To offer a (very non-comprehensive) set of moments where his ideological confusion shines through, consider the following:

In talking about what he calls "substantive justice" in his section on homelessness, Vitale writes "Even if the law is enforced equitably and without bias or malice, it still results in the incarceration of large numbers of people who are are homeless, mentally ill, and poor, rather than hardened predators."

Now, this might seem like a rather language-specific point to start with, but I actually think it's hugely important. Language reflects our ideology and way of thinking about and framing the world. Here, Vitale very clearly sets up a conceptual contrast between the merely disadvantaged people unjustly targeted for incarceration, and those "predators" more rightly understood as deserving incapacitation. Even taking into account the hypothetical framing of this sentence, it's a telling choice of phrasing. The thought of someone using the essentializing language of predators - in a book where he discusses the racist history of the superpredator concept no less - betrays someone who has not done enough to interrogate and unlearn hegemonic value systems and ontologies.

This is not an isolated example. Vitale repeatedly falls back into traditionally liberal ways of thinking about crime and disorder. This is most clear in his section on policing protest, where he resorts to a "good peaceful protestor" vs "bad violent looter" dichotomous thinking that most people critically engaged with the current uprising have come to instinctively reject. Again, it's almost impressive that in a section where he critiques police for delimiting the acceptable space for protest, he repeatedly emphasizes the distinction between "the real threat" at protests (looters, property destruction) and the liberal fantasy of large demonstrations whose "primary character remains peaceful." In a book that seems to be largely occasioned by the Black Lives Matter movement and the Ferguson uprisings specifically, he implies that political leaders could have forestalled the anger over Michael Brown's state sanctioned murder by having the right "conversations" and implicitly browbeats those in the protests who channeled their rage into property destruction.

Relatedly, his ideological position is made very clear by the way he talks about political movements and other justice struggles. His entire framing of the policing of political movements is that the scope and authority of intelligence programs like the FBI were an over-reaction to the threat of Communism and Anarchism, whose revolutionary potential he dismisses. He writes "Revolutionary groups did exist across the US, but their influence was largely ideological rather than organizational. They produced numerous newspapers and leaflets, but had little connection to actual unions." (!) I want to see him defend that sentence to Robin Kelley. Or Harry Haywood. To be clear, he makes good points in this section about the history of political policing and how it clearly serves industrial and commercial interests. But this framing also strongly implies that he would see such policing as more appropriate if he saw more legitimate revolutionary potential in the radical political movements he dismisses.

Lastly, one of the most telling characteristics of contemporary abolitionists, from Angela Davis to Mariame Kaba, is that they think critically about applying their ideas of justice and healing not solely to incarceration and policing, but are deeply intersectional and international in propounding their ideas. They would not, as Vitale does, talk of "transgendered persons," reproduce neo-colonial foreign policy distinctions between "semi-democratic Nigeria" and (how generous!) "more democratic" India, or formulate a half-critique of Israel in these terms: "whose behavior in Gaza and the West Bank have inspired widespread revulsion, some of which blows back on the United States in the form of both international and domestic terrorism." Note the passive voice, the qualified language, the prioritization of American lives, and the failure to name the structural colonial violence against Palestinians that he invokes. Then contrast it with Freedom is a Constant Struggle, or the Movement for Black Lives platform on Palestine, or a million other examples.

It's actually sad to see this ideology, and this kind of language, in a book that has become such a mainstay on abolitionist book lists and in the discourse. Had he actually engaged with abolitionist thought, I don't think this kind of framing would be possible. And I can be reasonably confident he hasn't, because searching "Angela Davis," "Ruth Gilmore," and "Mariame Kaba" in the e-book yields 0 results. In the interest of fairness, I should say that he does mention Davis and Gilmore's group, Critical Resistance, once. Tellingly, he labels it a "criminal justice reform group." Which ultimately, is what his book is - a mediocre criminal justice reform leaflet. ...more

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Dec 29, 2017 Bean rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: beans-reviews, abolition-now, your-next-progressive-book-club

The End of Policing is a concise, accessible read -- I imagine it primarily to blow the minds of people who are invested in equity, identify politically as liberal, and eager to get more creative in how to structure our society for safety, wellness, and justice. Folks with further-left politics may appreciate the talking points that this book provides, even if the content is largely familiar (thanks to *generations* of visionary police/prison abolition organizing).

Alex Vitale covers a lot of gro ...more

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Jun 04, 2020 hima ☾ rated it liked it

Shelves: left-policing-prisons, left-for-beginners, 2020, left-ibooks, 2020-reviewed

american police function, despite whatever good intentions they have, as a tool for managing deeply entrenched inequalities in a way that systematically produces injustices for the poor, socially marginal, and nonwhite.

edit (21 june 2020)
◦ so after considering it for a while i don't think this is a 4-star read. i hold that it's a good primer for someone who's never thought about any of this before—but it's got a sort of... liberal... slant... that i don't love. so i'm bumping it down, but i ...more

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Jun 13, 2020 Scriptor Ignotus rated it liked it

Shelves: politics

The sudden popularity of this book is attributable to a recent happening that some latter-day Suetonius might contextualize as one of the most bizarre and ominous spectacles in American political history. On June 6, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey found himself in the middle of a crowd of thousands of bilious protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. Amidst the tumultuous nationwide reaction to the police killing of an African-American man named George Floyd—running a gamut from p ...more

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Jul 02, 2020 Emily Rainsford rated it liked it

This book was not what I expected. That perhaps makes my rating a little unfair but I can't give it any more stars, mostly because overall I feel like the book didn't actually achieve anything.

Let me explain. I decided to read this book because I was curious about the whole "defund the police" idea. I wanted to know more about what that vision entailed, how it would work, I had all the usual questions like "what about paedophiles" etc etc, that one has when new to the Defund the Police concept. ...more

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Jun 07, 2020 ashley c rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, social-justice, social-theory

PS. The ebook is STILL free on Verso's website! If you can, consider donating the cost of the book to the Black Lives Matter movement - resources here. The site also has a section on how to donate without money by playing Youtube videos (creators will donate part of or all of the revenue from the views).

Alex Vitale highlights how pervasive policing is in the US and how there is strong evidence that policing is not at all appropriate and very harmful as a way to protect the community and address PS. The ebook is STILL free on Verso's website! If you can, consider donating the cost of the book to the Black Lives Matter movement - resources here. The site also has a section on how to donate without money by playing Youtube videos (creators will donate part of or all of the revenue from the views).

Alex Vitale highlights how pervasive policing is in the US and how there is strong evidence that policing is not at all appropriate and very harmful as a way to protect the community and address social issues such as homelessness, drug use, (even) crime, and more.

He definitely answered all the questions I have, such as, "Why is everyone talking about defuding the police?" and "if there is no police, how do we ensure safety and justice?"

He also explains how the origins of the modern police institution in the West is to manage and control slaves, the colonised population, and the new industrial working class. Police in the UK and US originated from groups created to suppress workers' movements (such as strikes and protests), colonial police that targeted natives for the interests of the white colonists, and slave patrols, which aimed to prevent slaves from escaping or congregating, and when slavery was abolished, aimed to prevent the growth of a Negro community by putting Black people through the criminal justice system, forced to be in prison, sentenced to death, or working in forced labour (ie. essentially re-invented slave trades) to earn their freedom.

He described various social aspects of the US that is currently handled by the police problematically, creating and re-creating inequality, oppression, and the very social issues its purported to address.

Something that helpers working in social services may already have realised - and this applies locally too - that the police nor the criminal justice system is not an appropriate resource for people who need help with their mental health, homelessness. Why would policing be in any way helpful when the goal of policing is not to identify and address long-term and short-term needs, but rather, often to 'manage' the behaviour of this individuals in the public sphere? It's about resolving public nuisance rather than ensuring the right support.

With drug use in the US, there's a shocking (for me when I first heard about it) element of racial policing that has been admitted by the government but to little outrage. The prohibition of opium, cocaine, and marijuana is about managing and controlling the Chinese, Black, and Mexican populations through giving the police power to investigate, invade homes, and arrest, under the guise of managing drug use. This is despite general medical consensus that the way to address drug addition is through legalization, access to healthcare programmes, and creating financial stability for the population.

While the arguments about policing is US-centric, I still think it's very useful for a general understanding on the issues with policing. For Singaporeans not used to critiquing our state institutions, this is a good start. ...more

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Jul 28, 2020 Maxine CD rated it it was ok

The meager stars I give this book are for the helpful statistics and historical background that he provides that help to uncover the failings of the police in the US (and sometimes its international counterparts). What's missing is a larger structural analysis grounded in anti-capitalist and grassroots abolition work (mostly led by Black activists) - without this, the arguments throughout the book are fragmented, confusing and at their worst, offensive. Off the top of my head, some things that c ...more

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Aug 01, 2020 Barry rated it really liked it

Shelves: economics, history

An eye-opening and thoughtful book on policing. Like many other people around the world, I was appalled and disgusted when I saw the video of a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, even after he told the officer that he couldn't breathe. Tragically, George Floyd died as a result. But, more than that, since that day there have been constant demonstrations of Black Lives Matter in numerous cities, not only the US, but also in other countries as well. Then, I was horrified a week or An eye-opening and thoughtful book on policing. Like many other people around the world, I was appalled and disgusted when I saw the video of a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, even after he told the officer that he couldn't breathe. Tragically, George Floyd died as a result. But, more than that, since that day there have been constant demonstrations of Black Lives Matter in numerous cities, not only the US, but also in other countries as well. Then, I was horrified a week or so ago when videos of unmarked "police officers" rounding up seemingly innocent protestor into vehicles started to pop up. I thought that stuff could only happen in some dictatorship or in the movies. But, this was real and it was happening for a number of days.

I lived in the US in the early to mid-2000s as an international student. Fortunately, my experience with police was generally positive while I was there (one cop was very nice when he inquired if I was ok after I skidded off a highway in the winter). But, while there I had also read and heard of the discriminatory treatment that African Americans received from the police. I had heard of the "broken window" theory. I had heard of "stop and frisk". But, I did not understand fully the devastating effects of the discriminatory enforcement of laws on the minorities communities throughout the US. This book lays bare the gut-wrenching and appaling facts of how policing has not only failed the US, but it is, arguably, one of the most urgent problems that the US needs to solve to ensure fairer lives for all of its citizens.

Professor Vitale argues that the problem with policing in the US is not because there are a few bad apples in the force. Instead, he argues that the problem is the policing itself is based on deeply discriminatory ideologies. He provides the discriminatory history of how the first police forces were formed as a means of mass control, especially of the less fortunate communities (African Americans, poor immigrants, etc.) He discusses the failures of policing on various topics ranging from policing at school (in response to school shooting incidents) to sex workers to border patrols and political activists. He also illuminates how specific reforms steps that have been taken have not improved the situation, because those reforms are police-centered. Finally, he proposes alternative ways, which mainly attempts to alleviate the underlying causes of those crimes in the first place (economic reasons mainly).

I find this book to be highly educational, comprehensive and compelling. The history of how various police forces and initiatives were founded is something that I did not know before. Furthermore, I find Professor Vitale's objections on policing to be very compelling, filled by statistics on the devastating failure of current as well as past police enforcement initiatives. Finally, I find his proposals to be rational and well thought-out. Though, the politics to get to the solution may be, let's just say extremely difficult in the current polarized environment in the US.

...more

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Jun 13, 2020 rosalind marked it as dnf

Shelves: audiobook, public-policy, nonfiction, your-liberalism-is-showing, hot-takes, carceral-state

130620: dnf @ 38%. i just can’t do it. this chapter on policing of mentally ill people (which vitale calls “PMI” for some fucking reason????) is so incredibly dehumanizing that i cannot fuck with this guy anymore. onto actual abolitionist texts!

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Jun 26, 2020 Jasmine added it

Shelves: books-i-own, online-ebooks

No date, no rating: DNF @ 37%

I’m putting it down for a while. This is really heavy on facts and statistics. What I have read has been very informative and eye-opening but I’m just not in the mood to continue reading right now. Will hopefully pick it up again later!

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Jun 15, 2020 Marianne rated it really liked it

fuck cops!

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Jun 02, 2020 Heather rated it really liked it

FYI: With the current protests, Verso Books are offering the ebook for free here. Many are downloading it and donating the equivalent cost of a book, at least, to a relevant cause.

Making a conscious effort to read and learn more and to go beyond just having opinions on what's right and wrong to broaden my knowledge on history/current events, have more informed conversations and contribute more actively going forward - basically, do better - starting here: a concise and easy to access read on the ...more

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Jun 08, 2020 Ace marked it as to-read

Available for download at https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817... ...more

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Apr 22, 2019 Elissa rated it it was amazing

This book tugs at my heart because too many people I know can't imagine a world without police. They still equate police to safety despite all the evidence and experience to the contrary. Policing ruins schools. Policing criminalizes addiction and poverty. Policing hurts people with mental illness. Policing demands complicity in white supremacy. Policing disrupts social change and labor movements. Policing is nothing more than a form of social control exercised by the powerful to disenfranchise ...more

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Aug 04, 2020 Modern Major General rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: policing

When I ran for political office in 2016, many of the ideas contained within this book were part of my platform; however, I lacked the necessary words, background, and sources at the time to really argue them from a position of strength. It was more what I just felt was right. Reading this has been amazing in finding my feelings put down in facts, data, and policies which are reinforced by statistical information, historical evidence, and actual real-world examples.

In reading this, unfortunately, ...more

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Jun 04, 2020 Sriya rated it it was amazing

"Powerful political forces benefit from abusive, aggressive, and invasive policing, and they are not going to be won over or driven from power by technical arguments or heartfelt appeals to do the right thing. They may adopt a language of reform and fund a few pilot programs, but mostly they will continue to reproduce their political power by fanning fear of the poor, nonwhite, disabled, and dispossessed and empowering police to be the “thin blue line” between the haves and the have-nots."

really ...more

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About Alex S. Vitale

Alex S. Vitale

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Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His writings about policing have appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, USA Today, the Nation, and Vice News. He has made appearances on NPR and NY1.

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“At root, they fail to appreciate that the basic nature of the law and the police, since its earliest origins, is to be a tool for managing inequality and maintaining the status quo. Police reforms that fail to directly address this reality are doomed to reproduce it.” — 12 likes

“Police argue that residents in high-crime communities often demand police action. What is left out is that these communities also ask for better schools, parks, libraries, and jobs, but these services are rarely provided.” — 7 likes

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