No More Police: A Case for Abolition

by Mariame Kaba

But without police, who will we turn to for help? Police abolition is not about making cops vanish overnight without having shifted the conditions that fuel violence. It is about actively shifting responsibility for community safety to people best equipped to respond to and prevent crises. Health care workers, community leaders, violence interrupters, victim/survivor advocates, religious leaders, neighbors, family members, and friends—all of the people who make up the fabric of a community—are in a better position to prevent and respond to crises than armed strangers. And, it is critical that we proceed with caution with respect to “alternatives” to police. Police killings are not the only grammar of policing; the history and present-day operation of the police state teach us that multiple actors and institutions, including those being proffered as substitutes to police, enact the violence of policing in service of fabricating and maintaining the order racial capitalism requires. In other words, beware the “soft police,” as well as the “common sense” narratives of scarcity, competition, deservingness, worthiness, and individual responsibility that drive U.S. social policy. When we start to unpack these, we see the racist, patriarchal, ableist, homophobic, and transphobic notions of “normalcy” that underpin them, and how they are violently policed by cops, medical professionals, social workers, and communities. As we argue in the “No Soft Police” chapter, our vision can’t b...