No More Police: A Case for Abolition

by Mariame Kaba

Today, these functions are spread across a range of government agencies and institutions. Together, they create and administer social policy, a collection of rules that govern the management and distribution of resources and enforce social norms. Public schools, health care organizations, and social welfare agencies exercise police power and use coercive means to enforce “social policy.” These measures include everything from expulsions and treatment mandates to denial of benefits and family separation. U.S. social policy, bolstered by neoliberal narratives of individual responsibility, controls access to social goods based on structures of “eligibility” rather than entitlement. In other words, rather than presuming that every individual should have what they need to survive and thrive, “eligibility” requirements force people to “prove” that they’re deserving of what they need. This system enables the police project of sorting people into categories of “deserving” and “undeserving,” and then assigning resources, surveilling, containing, and controlling them to fabricate order, pacify the population, promote “productivity,” and maintain existing economic and social systems.