This is a really thoughtful description by sociologist @patrick_sharkey of how defunding the police could be achieved. It comes with an important preface, which I'm going to quote here in full. washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/0…
"Over the past 10 years, an expanding body of research has shown just how damaging violence is to community life, children’s academic trajectories and healthy child development. We have rigorous, causal evidence that every shooting in a neighborhood affects children’s sleep..."
"...and their ability to focus and learn. When a neighborhood becomes violent, it begins to fall apart, as public spaces empty, businesses close, parks and playgrounds turn dangerous, and families try move elsewhere. Violence is the fundamental challenge for cities..."
"...Nothing works if public space is unsafe. Those who argue that the police have no role in maintaining safe streets are arguing against lots of strong evidence. One of the most robust, most uncomfortable findings in criminology is that putting more officers on the street..."
"...leads to less violent crime. We know this from randomized experiments involving 'hot spots policing' and natural experiments in which more officers were brought to the streets because of something other than crime..."
"--a shift in terror alert level or the timing of a federal grant--and violent crime fell. After the unrest around the deaths of Freddie Gray & Michael Brown, police officers stepped back from their duty to protect and serve arrests for all kinds of low-level offenses dropped..."
"...and violence rose. This shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that protests against violent policing lead to more violence; rather, it means that when police don’t do their jobs, violence often results." -30-
This piece was paired with another very important one by criminologist Rod Brunson, about the ways that heavily black neighborhoods have been victimized by both over-policing AND under-policing. I'm going to quote from it at length, too. washingtonpost.com/outlook/underp…
"A great deal of scholarship has demonstrated that under-policing also leaves residents feeling perpetually underserved & unsafe. Residents of distressed urban neighborhoods have complained about ineffective policing for centuries, including officers’ rudeness, slow response..."
"...and lack of empathy for crime victims. Some residents of high-crime neighborhoods have long concluded that police are either incapable of keeping them safe or unwilling to do so — and a small subset of repeat offenders have discarded the criminal justice system entirely..."
"...as a viable mechanism for settling trivial disputes with enemies, opting instead to literally take matters into their own hands. The result is many black and brown communities now suffer from the worst of all worlds: over-aggressive police behavior in frequent encounters..."
"...coupled with inability of law enforcement to protect public safety. But defunding police dept's would address only one side of this problem. And the real dangers of under-policing would just get worse in the neighborhoods that most need the police to improve—not disappear."
