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A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete
If police are the problem, what’s the solution?
Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without the disorganizing interventions of neighborhood response networks, community-based restorative justice practices, democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced social services.
A World Without Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in which we keep us safe.
Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without the disorganizing interventions of neighborhood response networks, community-based restorative justice practices, democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced social services.
A World Without Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in which we keep us safe.
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 24, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
August 20, 2021
Thank you Verso UK for the copy! This was a pretty solid introduction to the concept of abolition from a US perspective, best suited to those who are interested in the concept of police abolition and want to find out more/solidify their ideas. I really enjoyed the way Maher puts together secondary sources and arranges his information. I think overall he's really persuasive.
A huge flaw, however, is the section on pages 155-6 where Maher claims that putting killer cops in jail is to support abolition. He justifies this using 1-2 sentences about how celebrating the jailing of cops helps to unite a movement, and to oppose this when protest has led to a sentencing is to be divisive or to be divorced from popular sentiment. Maher then ends this chapter without going any further about why he thinks this, which is both an issue on Maher's part and an editorial problem. Mariame Kaba has strongly refuted this argument, yet Maher cites Kaba at the end of the section with no sense of irony. This is NOT an issue of "abstract moralism" (155). As Kaba herself said -- which can be found in Kaba's 2021 book "We do this 'til we free us" (Haymarket) -- abolitionism is a set of tangible political commitments. You are allowed to oppose cops and prisons, and to work against cops and prisons, without identifying specifically as an abolitionist; but if you DO identify as an abolitionist, then it is fundamentally incorrect to celebrate the jailing of ANYONE, even killer cops. To celebrate a cop going to jail is to acknowledge the validity of the justice system that sent the cop to jail -- the system that sends EVERYONE to jail! As Kaba has written, there is a difference between personal healing and political ideology. While a survivor or a victim's family may feel personally glad that a cop has gone to jail, and while we are all allowed to feel relieved about this on the inside, this has nothing to do with abolitionist politics. There are many other measures to support when it comes to these cops, such as firing them and making sure that they are never in a position of power again, making sure it is impossible for them to do such lethal harm again - but it simply does not make sense to point at a handful of cops going to jail and call that abolitionist.
The above is puzzling because Maher's thesis is that, while abolition seems impossible and seems like hard work, it is first and foremost a radical act of the imagination. So why can't he incorporate this one thing into his thinking? Especially when he constantly talks about how the state will not save us, and how even small concessions allow carceral and policing logic to infiltrate any attempt at abolitionist reform... It's as though Maher thinks that "the people" protesting on the streets could never want anything other than jail time for cops, that "the people" are too dense to realise that jailing cops is not the radical political statement that it might at first seem to be. It makes me wonder who Maher thinks "the people" are, because, as many other people working toward abolition and many leftists know, most people don't trust the cops nor the justice system at all in the first place, and so would not derive satisfaction out of the jailing of cops.
Anyway, apart from that really big flaw, the book is a good consolidation of secondary sources. I'd compare it to Kathryn Yusoff's "A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None" in that they're both books written by white allies who try hard to listen to, and platform, marginalised (especially Black) voices and to compile these. Although Yusoff, in my view, has a more rigorous citation ideology and a stronger bibliography.
Which kind of just brings me to one of my main questions reading this book. Why did Geo Maher have to be the one writing it? Especially as this book comes from a huge publisher like Verso. I haven't really heard Maher's name much re: the topic of abolition, and he doesn't seem like an obvious candidate to me, and so I can't help but wonder whether a different writer working on the same book concept might have brought a more unique or a more indispensable perspective.
A huge flaw, however, is the section on pages 155-6 where Maher claims that putting killer cops in jail is to support abolition. He justifies this using 1-2 sentences about how celebrating the jailing of cops helps to unite a movement, and to oppose this when protest has led to a sentencing is to be divisive or to be divorced from popular sentiment. Maher then ends this chapter without going any further about why he thinks this, which is both an issue on Maher's part and an editorial problem. Mariame Kaba has strongly refuted this argument, yet Maher cites Kaba at the end of the section with no sense of irony. This is NOT an issue of "abstract moralism" (155). As Kaba herself said -- which can be found in Kaba's 2021 book "We do this 'til we free us" (Haymarket) -- abolitionism is a set of tangible political commitments. You are allowed to oppose cops and prisons, and to work against cops and prisons, without identifying specifically as an abolitionist; but if you DO identify as an abolitionist, then it is fundamentally incorrect to celebrate the jailing of ANYONE, even killer cops. To celebrate a cop going to jail is to acknowledge the validity of the justice system that sent the cop to jail -- the system that sends EVERYONE to jail! As Kaba has written, there is a difference between personal healing and political ideology. While a survivor or a victim's family may feel personally glad that a cop has gone to jail, and while we are all allowed to feel relieved about this on the inside, this has nothing to do with abolitionist politics. There are many other measures to support when it comes to these cops, such as firing them and making sure that they are never in a position of power again, making sure it is impossible for them to do such lethal harm again - but it simply does not make sense to point at a handful of cops going to jail and call that abolitionist.
The above is puzzling because Maher's thesis is that, while abolition seems impossible and seems like hard work, it is first and foremost a radical act of the imagination. So why can't he incorporate this one thing into his thinking? Especially when he constantly talks about how the state will not save us, and how even small concessions allow carceral and policing logic to infiltrate any attempt at abolitionist reform... It's as though Maher thinks that "the people" protesting on the streets could never want anything other than jail time for cops, that "the people" are too dense to realise that jailing cops is not the radical political statement that it might at first seem to be. It makes me wonder who Maher thinks "the people" are, because, as many other people working toward abolition and many leftists know, most people don't trust the cops nor the justice system at all in the first place, and so would not derive satisfaction out of the jailing of cops.
Anyway, apart from that really big flaw, the book is a good consolidation of secondary sources. I'd compare it to Kathryn Yusoff's "A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None" in that they're both books written by white allies who try hard to listen to, and platform, marginalised (especially Black) voices and to compile these. Although Yusoff, in my view, has a more rigorous citation ideology and a stronger bibliography.
Which kind of just brings me to one of my main questions reading this book. Why did Geo Maher have to be the one writing it? Especially as this book comes from a huge publisher like Verso. I haven't really heard Maher's name much re: the topic of abolition, and he doesn't seem like an obvious candidate to me, and so I can't help but wonder whether a different writer working on the same book concept might have brought a more unique or a more indispensable perspective.
January 3, 2024
I was loaned this by my friend Nastia who is a public defender and lives in this world much more than I ever could. As an appreciator of people's libraries and the act of using them as such, I had become increasingly interested in taking out my first book from their collection since they moved to the UPW. Nastia gave this to me as an "intro text," half believing I would actually read it. While this is generally not my cup of tea, there are several things that I appreciated: exposure to W.E.B Dubois theories on society and race, specifically as it relates to the goals and shortcomings of Reconstruction, the real-life examples of self policing communities that exist today, and, most importantly, this text as a record of mind boggling atrocities that have been pushed to the fringe of - if not expunged from - society's memory. The reference to the 1985 MOVE bombings when Philadelphia police bombed their own citizens - including children - was particularly affecting, and it's something I hope I will never forget. I am sure for every MOVE bombing there are ten others that have been excluded from our education, and that is why a book like this is important.
October 18, 2021
Maher's strength here is in two parts: one, debunking the mythology of the police and clearing away the fog to show just how desperately we need change now; and two, showing readers how these strong communities are built, and how they are already functioning. While still a massive and difficult undertaking, this book moves abolition within near reach and pushes us to recognize the power we hold. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for more information on how this work can be done, as well as anyone who struggles with finding the right words when discussing abolition with someone who isn't totally convinced.
May 3, 2023
Been trying to canvass the recent output responding to the 'Abolish the Police' moment, and I read this immediately after reading Cedric Johnson's two books. The funny thing, all too common these days, is that Johnson puts himself explicitly in opposition to those like Maher – and positions himself as doing so by virtue of defending 'historical materialism.' And I'm sure there's plenty here he would object to, as Maher is a bit too much of a spinning top in the so-called kyriarchy.
But, if there is any detectible analytical affinity that I share with Johnson (if forced at gunpoint to choose between a barren economism and a Krakenesque white supremacy, I suppose), it totally disappears when one sees how it is strategically deployed. Johnson cashes out his argument by lapsing into a narcoleptic reformism, going so far as to see police unions as potential bases of support. Maher, with whom I have a fair share of basic disagreement, on the other hand, is at least an honest-to-god Communist. If we come at it from different angles, he's still orders of magnitude closer to the money as to the character of the police and the tactical repertoire we should deploy.
The caveat here is that he still leans too heavily on the anarchist toolkit. At one point, he reduces the answer to 'community,' whereas I would like to see that rendered as 'organization,' and explicitly as 'the party.' Johnson doesn't get there either, of course. So it goes.
But, if there is any detectible analytical affinity that I share with Johnson (if forced at gunpoint to choose between a barren economism and a Krakenesque white supremacy, I suppose), it totally disappears when one sees how it is strategically deployed. Johnson cashes out his argument by lapsing into a narcoleptic reformism, going so far as to see police unions as potential bases of support. Maher, with whom I have a fair share of basic disagreement, on the other hand, is at least an honest-to-god Communist. If we come at it from different angles, he's still orders of magnitude closer to the money as to the character of the police and the tactical repertoire we should deploy.
The caveat here is that he still leans too heavily on the anarchist toolkit. At one point, he reduces the answer to 'community,' whereas I would like to see that rendered as 'organization,' and explicitly as 'the party.' Johnson doesn't get there either, of course. So it goes.
December 28, 2021
a good book for a better understanding of abolition
December 25, 2021
I really enjoy a lot of the ideas and historical context so thoroughly outlined within this book. I totally believe in Maher’s reasoning and ideas such as the futility of reform- however I was already of this mindset and most excited to read about the strategies and theorizing of how to build strong communities without the police.
I got frustrated with this book because Maher really hammered his points in over and over. He made a very strong argument and it was incredibly well-researched, but I felt like I was slogging through the same points being reiterated over and over. Then when I finally got to the part I had been waiting for, I was kind of underwhelmed. Apart from touching on mutual aid, using different resources instead of the police being the most common resort, etc. this book really did not provide anything new that I hadn’t n heard already in the common rhetoric of abolishing the police.
What I would recommend this book for is for anyone who still buys into the notion of reform or who still believes the police is a necessity. This would be a great jumping off point for starting a conversation around police abolition.
I got frustrated with this book because Maher really hammered his points in over and over. He made a very strong argument and it was incredibly well-researched, but I felt like I was slogging through the same points being reiterated over and over. Then when I finally got to the part I had been waiting for, I was kind of underwhelmed. Apart from touching on mutual aid, using different resources instead of the police being the most common resort, etc. this book really did not provide anything new that I hadn’t n heard already in the common rhetoric of abolishing the police.
What I would recommend this book for is for anyone who still buys into the notion of reform or who still believes the police is a necessity. This would be a great jumping off point for starting a conversation around police abolition.
June 2, 2023
En ambitiøs titel og en ambitiøs bog. Skrevet under Black Lives Matter demonstrationerne efter mordet på George Floyd, er den meget kontant i opgøret med politiet og dens rolle i samfundet.
Dog føles løsningen, lige meget hvor mange gange forfatteren siger andet, ret utopisk og der bliver kun hentydet til andre problemer der kunne opstå, ud af en verden hvor det er de lokale communities der policer sig selv.
Lige meget hvad er det et vigtigt projekt og bogen er velskrevet.
Dog føles løsningen, lige meget hvor mange gange forfatteren siger andet, ret utopisk og der bliver kun hentydet til andre problemer der kunne opstå, ud af en verden hvor det er de lokale communities der policer sig selv.
Lige meget hvad er det et vigtigt projekt og bogen er velskrevet.
August 4, 2022
VERY GOOD! Very well researched with plenty of examples and connections. Only gripe is the density of it all. Definitely not a “beginner” book in terms of police abolition, but still very good. Took me a lot long than expected to read because I wanted to absorb and retain as much I could.
September 1, 2022
The author’s full name is George Ciccariello Maher, a former professor at Drexel University known for making several highly colorful tweets, including one where he made a sarcastic tweet about the alt-right fear of white genocide. Right wing persons chose to interpret the tweet as an endorsement of white genocide. The far right caused an uproar about this joke tweet and Drexel placed him on administrative leave, shortly after which he resigned his professorship. Maher also received death threats after he tweeted that the Las Vegas mass shooting of October 2017 was a consequence of white supremacist patriarchy.
Indeed “whiteness”—meaning white supremacy-- is a term mentioned in this book multiple times. Maher argues that the police—including officers of color--uphold white supremacy and economic exploitation. Thus the police should be eliminated—although he adds that police abolition will do no good if capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression are allowed to continue existing. Otherwise, the oppressive practices operating in the United States (economic exploitation, racism, sexism, etc.) will fuel the birth of new forms of oppressive public safety practices in the absence of police e.g. some form of private security.
In the book’s conclusion Maher quotes a character in Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower as stating that the police don’t protect us but they avenge us. Maher doesn’t elaborate but this appears to refer to the fact that police rarely interrupt violent crime in progress—instead they seek out the perpetrators after the fact for prosecution and punishment.
Police don’t deter crime according to Maher. Policing does little to solve crimes but reinforces the conditions in which criminal activity can be viable. Maher dismisses the idea that cops are idealistic public servants. Instead, he describes them as a collection of racketeers, full of enlightened self-interest, constantly agitating to secure more and more public funding and more and more protection from accountability for violating citizens’ rights. Crime rates have been going down in recent decades, but police budgets have been increasing astronomically. Maher notes that Chicago has twice as many cops per citizen as Los Angeles and spends 40 percent of its budget on police, but gun violence continues to rage in the city’s ghettos. The official nationwide police “clearance” (arrest) rate for sexual assault is only 32 precent and is probably significantly lower than that. An investigation by The Atlantic in 2019 found 200,000 untested rape kits across the country.
Cops operate with near total impunity. Due process protections in collective bargaining agreements and the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights laws in numerous states make it extremely difficult for individual officers to face accountability for abuses. The officers’ peers control the disciplinary process. Cop unions wail every time political authorities presume to force the slightest accountability on police. Major cities spend tens of million of dollars individually each year in police brutality settlements. Maher notes a coup of cases of cops taking exceptional steps to intimidate their ostensible civilian overlords when the latter tried to rein them in or they wanted concessions from politicians: the doxing of Bill de Blasio’s daughter during the George Floyd protests as well as the threats and harassment cops subjected a city councilwoman and city manager in Vallejo California. Even when cops get fired they are likely to get picked up by another department, e.g. the case of the Cleveland police officer who was hired after a previous firing from another agency and ended up shooting dead Tamir Rice as he played with a toy gun. If cops are held accountable, more often than not it is not because of internal police accountability procedures but because of ordinary citizens recording police brutality on their personal devices. This was the case when Officer Michael Slager was arrested in 2015 for shooting Walter Scott in the back five times from twenty feet as he fled. After the shooting, Slager planted a taser by Scott’s body to give himself a self-defense alibi and the police initially publicly repeated Slager’s story as fact—however Slager was was being video recorded nearby by ordinary citizen who released his footage to the public. Thus the cops had to arrest Slager. Similarly was the case with Oscar Grant, whose fatal shooting by police in Oakland on New Years Day 2009 was recorded by a bystander and released to the public even though police tried to confiscate bystanders’ cell phones after the shooting. Then there was the recording of Eric Garner’s execution and the interesting subsequent fate of the citizen who recorded it.
Maher notes some of the more prominent cases of police corruption and lawbreaking that have come to light over time. He refers to the police torture chamber run by Jon Burge in Chicago from the early 70's to the early 90's and the 100 felony drug convictions vacated in Chicago after it was found that Sergeant Ronald Watts was involved in planting drugs on suspects. The Lexnow Committee discovered widespread corruption in the NYPD in 1894 while the Knapp Commission in 1970, based on the revelations of Detective Frank Serpico (later to be portrayed in a movie by Al Pacino), discovered that things within the NYPD hadn't changed all that much since 1894. A report of the 1994 Mollen Commission found that within the NYPD low level corruption was attacked but commanders discouraged inquiry into more serious corruption.
Police operate in racially biased fashion. Maher notes that about half the people killed by police in an average year are white but blacks, compared to their percentage of the population, are disproportionately represented in fatal police shooting stats. He notes that in June 2020 Heather MacDonald published a piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that black people were killed at less a rate than their crime rate would suggest. She wrote that police shootings “are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects.” MacDonald cited a study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to back up her point. However, the authors of this study withdrew their findings when several things were pointed out to them by other scholars. According to Maher, studies of New York City’s stop and frisk encounters show that people of color and their communities were greatly over-represented as targets in that enterprise at a rate significantly above their actual crime rates. The inclusion as a measurement in the black crime rate the large number of non-violent black encounters with police occurring because of racial profiling has the effect of diluting the significance of the fatal police shooting of blacks. According to the Mapping Police Violence project, most police killings spring from encounters where a non-violent crime is suspected or no crime at all. Black victims of fatal police shootings were more likely to be unarmed and less threatening. Maher quotes data analyst Rob Arthur as writing in Slate that in cop killings, black people are less likely to have resisted arrest than white people.
Maher believes the police are un-reformable. Reforms like body cameras and chokehold bans don’t work. He argues that body cameras actually incentivize officers to use violence. Officer administered chokeholds had been banned by the NYPD for over two decades when officer Daniel Pantaleo fatally applied one to Eric Garner in 2014. According to Maher, the best part of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act introduced in 2020 is the provision stripping qualified immunity from officers—though federal immigration officials are exempted from it. But otherwise, the Act seems generally worthless, full of the same tired remedies that have been tried and failed before. He notes that Minneapolis police had been through the whole gamut of police reform measures (de-escalation training, etc.) before its recent spate of killings. Ultimately, police departments need to be rolled back and eliminated—according to Maher, the first step in the process should be to weaken and dismantle police unions. Maher addresses concerns in the book that destroying police unions would have negative affects on the overall labor movement.
He refers to some of the instances of police abuse and corruption that has come to light over time. For example, the torture chamber that Chicago police commander Jon Burge ran in in Chicago from the early 70's to the early 90's and the 100 felony drug convictions that were thrown out after it was revealed that Chicago PD sergeant Ronald Watts was involved in planting drugs on suspects. In 1894 the Lexow Commission found widespread corruption within the NYPD and the 1970 Knapp Commission (based on the revelations of Detective Frank Serpico) found that things had not changed much within the NYPD since 1894. In 1994, the Mollen Commission found that while the NYPD cracked down on minor corruption among officers, commanders discouraged investigation into more serious corruption, in part due to fears of negative publicity.
Maher argues that the only real deterrent to crime is eliminating capitalist exploitation and white supremacy. Strong communities are the real deterrent to crime: modes of living where everybody has the health care, housing, food, education, social support and other necessities of life while being able to fully participate democratically in all the major decisions of their community. The idea of a world without police might, not unreasonably, seem to be quite a stretch. But the world has numerous policing alternative models, as Maher shows. For example, there is the non-police CAHOOTS program in Eugene Oregon where a mental health worker and first responder address mental health crisis calls that in other cities would be addressed by the police. CAHOOTS workers respond to 20 percent of the city’s 911 calls at a cost of 2 percent of the city’s police budget. In 2019, CAHOOTS responded to 24,000 calls but police backup was required for only 150 of them. Maher notes that anywhere from a quarter to a half of fatal police shootings feature a person in mental health crisis. Maher cites other grassroots alternatives to policing in this country, for example those revolving around restorative justice. Maher cites Restorative Response Baltimore as an extremely successful example of an organization that has been able to settle conflicts in the community before the police get involved.
Maher’s idea of public safety is one which is part of a genuinely socialist society. People exercise direct democracy over the running of important aspects of their community. Public safety officers would be selected from and directly accountable to the community, subjected to immediate recall if the community decides so. He describes real world examples that mesh with this idea, for example the Rojava Kurdish community in Syria, Zapatista communities and a commune type neighborhood in Mexico City set up after Mexico’s 1985 earthquake.
The book’s chapter before its conclusion focuses on immigration issues. Just as he wants to eliminate police, Maher wants to move toward elimination of border enforcement. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Latinos have died attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert into the US in the decades since Bill Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper narrowed their crossing options. Operation Gatekeeper was launched in conjunction with NAFTA in 1994. With the latter, cheap American corn flooded into Mexico, throwing hundreds of thousands of Mexicans off the land and towards a trek of undocumented immigration in the US. He seems to believe that the Border Patrol doesn’t really serve a legitimate purpose except to terrorize brown people so they will be a docile source of undocumented labor in this country. He is in favor of abolishing ICE and CPB totally—not, as congressional Democrats have tried to do, by proposing the moving of ICE’s investigatory and legal functions into another agency and calling it ICE abolition. Border enforcement only further stimulates the violence that occurs along the border. As for border enforcement blocking the importation of illegal drugs into this country, Maher notes that the illegality of those drugs fuels the violence and profit to be made from them and that legalization of marijuana in numerous US states has seen marijuana prices and thus profits collapse. He writes that the available evidence shows that undocumented immigrants have little to no effect on the wages of American citizens. What keeps the wages of American workers down is the division of the working class. If American workers regardless of race or immigration status united and treated each other as equals, then wages would rise for everybody. The ruling class has always had an interest in dividing the workers by race e.g., giving poor whites the “wages of whiteness” that allowed them to feel superior to blacks and anti-immigrant sentiment serves the same purpose.
Though the author is known for being fiery, I can report that this book’s arguments are made in calm fashion. The book is relatively well written, though the conclusion is a little long. The author clearly intended this book to encourage ordinary people to join police abolition movements. An exhortative tone is evident in the book. Maher makes a reasoned case for his position and definitely gives food for thought.
It is possible that a presentation of more statistics about crime levels vs police funding/manpower levels might have been helpful. I also think it would have been interesting if Maher had addressed examples of supposed successful police work, for example the reforms of Cincinnati’s police department after the Timothy Thomas shooting of 2001 or the significant crime reduction in New York City supposedly due to the “broken windows” policing of Bill Bratton and Rudi Giuliani. I also wish he would have elaborated more on the trick used by several governing agencies since 2020 of shuffling police funding between different budget lines and calling it police defunding.
Indeed “whiteness”—meaning white supremacy-- is a term mentioned in this book multiple times. Maher argues that the police—including officers of color--uphold white supremacy and economic exploitation. Thus the police should be eliminated—although he adds that police abolition will do no good if capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression are allowed to continue existing. Otherwise, the oppressive practices operating in the United States (economic exploitation, racism, sexism, etc.) will fuel the birth of new forms of oppressive public safety practices in the absence of police e.g. some form of private security.
In the book’s conclusion Maher quotes a character in Octavia Butler’s novel The Parable of the Sower as stating that the police don’t protect us but they avenge us. Maher doesn’t elaborate but this appears to refer to the fact that police rarely interrupt violent crime in progress—instead they seek out the perpetrators after the fact for prosecution and punishment.
Police don’t deter crime according to Maher. Policing does little to solve crimes but reinforces the conditions in which criminal activity can be viable. Maher dismisses the idea that cops are idealistic public servants. Instead, he describes them as a collection of racketeers, full of enlightened self-interest, constantly agitating to secure more and more public funding and more and more protection from accountability for violating citizens’ rights. Crime rates have been going down in recent decades, but police budgets have been increasing astronomically. Maher notes that Chicago has twice as many cops per citizen as Los Angeles and spends 40 percent of its budget on police, but gun violence continues to rage in the city’s ghettos. The official nationwide police “clearance” (arrest) rate for sexual assault is only 32 precent and is probably significantly lower than that. An investigation by The Atlantic in 2019 found 200,000 untested rape kits across the country.
Cops operate with near total impunity. Due process protections in collective bargaining agreements and the Law Enforcement Officers Bill of Rights laws in numerous states make it extremely difficult for individual officers to face accountability for abuses. The officers’ peers control the disciplinary process. Cop unions wail every time political authorities presume to force the slightest accountability on police. Major cities spend tens of million of dollars individually each year in police brutality settlements. Maher notes a coup of cases of cops taking exceptional steps to intimidate their ostensible civilian overlords when the latter tried to rein them in or they wanted concessions from politicians: the doxing of Bill de Blasio’s daughter during the George Floyd protests as well as the threats and harassment cops subjected a city councilwoman and city manager in Vallejo California. Even when cops get fired they are likely to get picked up by another department, e.g. the case of the Cleveland police officer who was hired after a previous firing from another agency and ended up shooting dead Tamir Rice as he played with a toy gun. If cops are held accountable, more often than not it is not because of internal police accountability procedures but because of ordinary citizens recording police brutality on their personal devices. This was the case when Officer Michael Slager was arrested in 2015 for shooting Walter Scott in the back five times from twenty feet as he fled. After the shooting, Slager planted a taser by Scott’s body to give himself a self-defense alibi and the police initially publicly repeated Slager’s story as fact—however Slager was was being video recorded nearby by ordinary citizen who released his footage to the public. Thus the cops had to arrest Slager. Similarly was the case with Oscar Grant, whose fatal shooting by police in Oakland on New Years Day 2009 was recorded by a bystander and released to the public even though police tried to confiscate bystanders’ cell phones after the shooting. Then there was the recording of Eric Garner’s execution and the interesting subsequent fate of the citizen who recorded it.
Maher notes some of the more prominent cases of police corruption and lawbreaking that have come to light over time. He refers to the police torture chamber run by Jon Burge in Chicago from the early 70's to the early 90's and the 100 felony drug convictions vacated in Chicago after it was found that Sergeant Ronald Watts was involved in planting drugs on suspects. The Lexnow Committee discovered widespread corruption in the NYPD in 1894 while the Knapp Commission in 1970, based on the revelations of Detective Frank Serpico (later to be portrayed in a movie by Al Pacino), discovered that things within the NYPD hadn't changed all that much since 1894. A report of the 1994 Mollen Commission found that within the NYPD low level corruption was attacked but commanders discouraged inquiry into more serious corruption.
Police operate in racially biased fashion. Maher notes that about half the people killed by police in an average year are white but blacks, compared to their percentage of the population, are disproportionately represented in fatal police shooting stats. He notes that in June 2020 Heather MacDonald published a piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that black people were killed at less a rate than their crime rate would suggest. She wrote that police shootings “are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects.” MacDonald cited a study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences to back up her point. However, the authors of this study withdrew their findings when several things were pointed out to them by other scholars. According to Maher, studies of New York City’s stop and frisk encounters show that people of color and their communities were greatly over-represented as targets in that enterprise at a rate significantly above their actual crime rates. The inclusion as a measurement in the black crime rate the large number of non-violent black encounters with police occurring because of racial profiling has the effect of diluting the significance of the fatal police shooting of blacks. According to the Mapping Police Violence project, most police killings spring from encounters where a non-violent crime is suspected or no crime at all. Black victims of fatal police shootings were more likely to be unarmed and less threatening. Maher quotes data analyst Rob Arthur as writing in Slate that in cop killings, black people are less likely to have resisted arrest than white people.
Maher believes the police are un-reformable. Reforms like body cameras and chokehold bans don’t work. He argues that body cameras actually incentivize officers to use violence. Officer administered chokeholds had been banned by the NYPD for over two decades when officer Daniel Pantaleo fatally applied one to Eric Garner in 2014. According to Maher, the best part of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act introduced in 2020 is the provision stripping qualified immunity from officers—though federal immigration officials are exempted from it. But otherwise, the Act seems generally worthless, full of the same tired remedies that have been tried and failed before. He notes that Minneapolis police had been through the whole gamut of police reform measures (de-escalation training, etc.) before its recent spate of killings. Ultimately, police departments need to be rolled back and eliminated—according to Maher, the first step in the process should be to weaken and dismantle police unions. Maher addresses concerns in the book that destroying police unions would have negative affects on the overall labor movement.
He refers to some of the instances of police abuse and corruption that has come to light over time. For example, the torture chamber that Chicago police commander Jon Burge ran in in Chicago from the early 70's to the early 90's and the 100 felony drug convictions that were thrown out after it was revealed that Chicago PD sergeant Ronald Watts was involved in planting drugs on suspects. In 1894 the Lexow Commission found widespread corruption within the NYPD and the 1970 Knapp Commission (based on the revelations of Detective Frank Serpico) found that things had not changed much within the NYPD since 1894. In 1994, the Mollen Commission found that while the NYPD cracked down on minor corruption among officers, commanders discouraged investigation into more serious corruption, in part due to fears of negative publicity.
Maher argues that the only real deterrent to crime is eliminating capitalist exploitation and white supremacy. Strong communities are the real deterrent to crime: modes of living where everybody has the health care, housing, food, education, social support and other necessities of life while being able to fully participate democratically in all the major decisions of their community. The idea of a world without police might, not unreasonably, seem to be quite a stretch. But the world has numerous policing alternative models, as Maher shows. For example, there is the non-police CAHOOTS program in Eugene Oregon where a mental health worker and first responder address mental health crisis calls that in other cities would be addressed by the police. CAHOOTS workers respond to 20 percent of the city’s 911 calls at a cost of 2 percent of the city’s police budget. In 2019, CAHOOTS responded to 24,000 calls but police backup was required for only 150 of them. Maher notes that anywhere from a quarter to a half of fatal police shootings feature a person in mental health crisis. Maher cites other grassroots alternatives to policing in this country, for example those revolving around restorative justice. Maher cites Restorative Response Baltimore as an extremely successful example of an organization that has been able to settle conflicts in the community before the police get involved.
Maher’s idea of public safety is one which is part of a genuinely socialist society. People exercise direct democracy over the running of important aspects of their community. Public safety officers would be selected from and directly accountable to the community, subjected to immediate recall if the community decides so. He describes real world examples that mesh with this idea, for example the Rojava Kurdish community in Syria, Zapatista communities and a commune type neighborhood in Mexico City set up after Mexico’s 1985 earthquake.
The book’s chapter before its conclusion focuses on immigration issues. Just as he wants to eliminate police, Maher wants to move toward elimination of border enforcement. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of Latinos have died attempting to cross the Sonoran Desert into the US in the decades since Bill Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper narrowed their crossing options. Operation Gatekeeper was launched in conjunction with NAFTA in 1994. With the latter, cheap American corn flooded into Mexico, throwing hundreds of thousands of Mexicans off the land and towards a trek of undocumented immigration in the US. He seems to believe that the Border Patrol doesn’t really serve a legitimate purpose except to terrorize brown people so they will be a docile source of undocumented labor in this country. He is in favor of abolishing ICE and CPB totally—not, as congressional Democrats have tried to do, by proposing the moving of ICE’s investigatory and legal functions into another agency and calling it ICE abolition. Border enforcement only further stimulates the violence that occurs along the border. As for border enforcement blocking the importation of illegal drugs into this country, Maher notes that the illegality of those drugs fuels the violence and profit to be made from them and that legalization of marijuana in numerous US states has seen marijuana prices and thus profits collapse. He writes that the available evidence shows that undocumented immigrants have little to no effect on the wages of American citizens. What keeps the wages of American workers down is the division of the working class. If American workers regardless of race or immigration status united and treated each other as equals, then wages would rise for everybody. The ruling class has always had an interest in dividing the workers by race e.g., giving poor whites the “wages of whiteness” that allowed them to feel superior to blacks and anti-immigrant sentiment serves the same purpose.
Though the author is known for being fiery, I can report that this book’s arguments are made in calm fashion. The book is relatively well written, though the conclusion is a little long. The author clearly intended this book to encourage ordinary people to join police abolition movements. An exhortative tone is evident in the book. Maher makes a reasoned case for his position and definitely gives food for thought.
It is possible that a presentation of more statistics about crime levels vs police funding/manpower levels might have been helpful. I also think it would have been interesting if Maher had addressed examples of supposed successful police work, for example the reforms of Cincinnati’s police department after the Timothy Thomas shooting of 2001 or the significant crime reduction in New York City supposedly due to the “broken windows” policing of Bill Bratton and Rudi Giuliani. I also wish he would have elaborated more on the trick used by several governing agencies since 2020 of shuffling police funding between different budget lines and calling it police defunding.
December 31, 2024
Unwaveringly convincing.
November 20, 2021
The writing in this book is good and there are some compelling information and frameworks presented in this book.
I wish there were some arguments that articulated specifically how crime rates and the deep widespread investment in cops are not related. In the book, he says "the hypertrophic growth of the American police state has no relationship whatsoever to crime rates, nor has it made us safe. Quite the opposite: policing has continued to expand despite two decades of falling crime rates." I wish he talked about why the crime rate has fallen if policing has no effect on crime. That is the analysis and argument that I have been looking to understand as I try to deepen my engagement with police abolition.
I wish there were some arguments that articulated specifically how crime rates and the deep widespread investment in cops are not related. In the book, he says "the hypertrophic growth of the American police state has no relationship whatsoever to crime rates, nor has it made us safe. Quite the opposite: policing has continued to expand despite two decades of falling crime rates." I wish he talked about why the crime rate has fallen if policing has no effect on crime. That is the analysis and argument that I have been looking to understand as I try to deepen my engagement with police abolition.
April 14, 2023
Written in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests, Maher makes a compelling case for police abolition. It served as an excellent introduction to the subject: dense with historical and factual context, highly readable, with a justified pathos about the past and present brutality of policing as an institution. The first four chapters detail the abolitionist case, with a key historical undercurrent drawn from WEB Dubois ‘Black Reconstruction’, which describes how land-owners employed “poor whites” as slave patrols, which morphed into the contemporary American police force. Dubois also writes that after the abolition of slavery, the petty privileges bestowed upon the poor white man, which “fed his vanity by associating him with the masters” (e.g. symbolic superiority, leniency in the courts relative to black people etc.) led him to identify as white rather than poor, disarming any possibility of solidarity. This is the key geneaological thrust of Maher’s book.
The following abolitionist case that Maher sets out is compelling, asking us to question who or what (i.e. capital) police really ‘protect’, and describing how many of the nominally ‘protective’ functions of the police are really compensation for a lack of adequately funded public infrastructure. For instance, dismantling access to mental health services means that police, who are not trained mental health workers, but “trained violence-workers” as Maher calls them, are commonly called in mental health crises, despite the fact that individuals with untreated mental illnesses are sixteen times more likely to be killed by the police relative to the population. This resonated with me personally: having worked on an overnight suicide hotline as a counsellor for a while, it bothered me the organisation's final point of escalation (in the case of an imminent suicide-in-progress) was to send police to the caller’s house. This was despite the fact that many such callers had previously been victimised by the police, and explicitly asked for anyone else other than the police to come. Another key example is sexual violence, noting that only around 1% of rapes lead to prosecution. Maher also highlights the absurdity of calling the police to intervene in these sorts of issues, given that they have some of the highest rates of sexual and domestic violence of any profession. Further, police contracts are rarely terminated, and weapons not often confiscated after such incidents. In both the cases of sexual or intimate partner violence and mental health crises, the police are by some measures the worst people to call, and there should surely be another service that addresses these issues. Yet nonetheless, police convince us they’re indispensable, despite very little relationship between numbers of police and crime rates. Maher cites one particularly compelling example of when the NYPD went on strike in 2014, to protest against Mayor Di Blasio’s complaint that they did not indict the officer that murdered Eric Garner. Attempting to show their own necessity through the strike, NYPD ended up demonstrating the opposite, with crime rates falling from 3-6% across the city during the strikes.
Maher also takes a negative view of police organising generally, noting that workers who oppress and crush worker solidarity are not ‘workers’ as such. “To suggest that there is a place for them in the labour movement”, Maher writes “is to embrace workers that routinely kill and brutalise their own union affiliates”. Further, their ‘unions’ are predominately ‘fraternal orders’ (the parallel with the culture to US college fraternities appears almost intentional here) and ‘police associations’ who receive millions from corporations, including real estate agencies hoping to gentrify areas by increasing police presence, thereby forcing out the original residents that the police most keenly victimise and oppress.
Maher also argues compellingly against the possibility of police reform, giving various examples of ‘reforms’ that resulted in increased police power and violence. For example, Clinton’s notorious ‘broken windows policing’, which encourages discriminatory behaviour and racial targeting, was initially introduced as an attempt at police reform. The neck restraint that killed George Floyd was a similar case, allegedly designed to be used as a ‘non-lethal’ alternative to other forms of chokeholds. Body cameras also don’t work, as they can be turned on and off and the footage can be edited to tell a story that favours the officer’s perspective in cases of brutality (e.g. depicting a victim of police violence as threatening, even when they were running away). The philosophy underlying reforms like these, are that more rules will mean less violence, but as Maher notes, the police break the rules all the time. If they do break the rules, there’s normally no one to turn to, given that police watchdogs, such as The Australian State of Victoria’s 'IBAC' are toothless, underfunded, and generally pass cases back to be examined by the police anyway (as was my experience when dealing with them).
The last few chapters describe some practical suggestions, such as disaffiliation of police ‘unions’ from the labour movement and an end of qualified immunity. Maher also describes a number of grassroots community coalitions that supplant police in tasks they are not fit for, such as Mothers/Men against Senseless Killing (MASK), Communities against Rape and Abuse (CARA), and Crisis Assistance Helping out on the Streets (CAHOOTS). This is all compelling, however the fundamental message of Maher's text ends up being an anticapitalist one: police are both a symptom and a perpetuating factor of our contemporary bind; they exist to ‘manage’ the inequalities of racial capitalism rather than addressing their root cause. Hence, abolishing the police, Maher argues, requires abolishing capitalism.
This I ultimately agree with, and though I would expect this from a book published by Verso (which I read for precisely this kind of thing), I nonetheless feel that this aspect of the text ultimately limits its discursive power. Namely, leftists will likely already agree with this conclusion, whereas I worry that liberals who would otherwise be open to questioning the legitimacy of the police, will dismiss the excellent arguments and evidence that Maher raises, based on the book’s conclusion as such. This is not helped by the fact that the text sometimes reads like a political manifesto, and that the more imminently realisable and practical solutions (e.g. disaffiliation of police from the labour movement; end to qualified immunity etc.), are interspersed with loftier claims such as abolishing national borders and ending capitalism. These aspects of the text prevent me from recommending it or lending it to my colleagues, for instance, who although left-leaning may be turned off by these more radical sentiments (and in turn realised that I may be more red-under-the-bed, or ‘watermelon’, than previously thought). In other words, I loved this book, but wish that it were slightly more accessible to someone not already comfortable with anticapitalist positions, as I think it would otherwise be a great resource to signpost people to for understanding what is really meant by the need to 'defund' or even abolish the police.
The following abolitionist case that Maher sets out is compelling, asking us to question who or what (i.e. capital) police really ‘protect’, and describing how many of the nominally ‘protective’ functions of the police are really compensation for a lack of adequately funded public infrastructure. For instance, dismantling access to mental health services means that police, who are not trained mental health workers, but “trained violence-workers” as Maher calls them, are commonly called in mental health crises, despite the fact that individuals with untreated mental illnesses are sixteen times more likely to be killed by the police relative to the population. This resonated with me personally: having worked on an overnight suicide hotline as a counsellor for a while, it bothered me the organisation's final point of escalation (in the case of an imminent suicide-in-progress) was to send police to the caller’s house. This was despite the fact that many such callers had previously been victimised by the police, and explicitly asked for anyone else other than the police to come. Another key example is sexual violence, noting that only around 1% of rapes lead to prosecution. Maher also highlights the absurdity of calling the police to intervene in these sorts of issues, given that they have some of the highest rates of sexual and domestic violence of any profession. Further, police contracts are rarely terminated, and weapons not often confiscated after such incidents. In both the cases of sexual or intimate partner violence and mental health crises, the police are by some measures the worst people to call, and there should surely be another service that addresses these issues. Yet nonetheless, police convince us they’re indispensable, despite very little relationship between numbers of police and crime rates. Maher cites one particularly compelling example of when the NYPD went on strike in 2014, to protest against Mayor Di Blasio’s complaint that they did not indict the officer that murdered Eric Garner. Attempting to show their own necessity through the strike, NYPD ended up demonstrating the opposite, with crime rates falling from 3-6% across the city during the strikes.
Maher also takes a negative view of police organising generally, noting that workers who oppress and crush worker solidarity are not ‘workers’ as such. “To suggest that there is a place for them in the labour movement”, Maher writes “is to embrace workers that routinely kill and brutalise their own union affiliates”. Further, their ‘unions’ are predominately ‘fraternal orders’ (the parallel with the culture to US college fraternities appears almost intentional here) and ‘police associations’ who receive millions from corporations, including real estate agencies hoping to gentrify areas by increasing police presence, thereby forcing out the original residents that the police most keenly victimise and oppress.
Maher also argues compellingly against the possibility of police reform, giving various examples of ‘reforms’ that resulted in increased police power and violence. For example, Clinton’s notorious ‘broken windows policing’, which encourages discriminatory behaviour and racial targeting, was initially introduced as an attempt at police reform. The neck restraint that killed George Floyd was a similar case, allegedly designed to be used as a ‘non-lethal’ alternative to other forms of chokeholds. Body cameras also don’t work, as they can be turned on and off and the footage can be edited to tell a story that favours the officer’s perspective in cases of brutality (e.g. depicting a victim of police violence as threatening, even when they were running away). The philosophy underlying reforms like these, are that more rules will mean less violence, but as Maher notes, the police break the rules all the time. If they do break the rules, there’s normally no one to turn to, given that police watchdogs, such as The Australian State of Victoria’s 'IBAC' are toothless, underfunded, and generally pass cases back to be examined by the police anyway (as was my experience when dealing with them).
The last few chapters describe some practical suggestions, such as disaffiliation of police ‘unions’ from the labour movement and an end of qualified immunity. Maher also describes a number of grassroots community coalitions that supplant police in tasks they are not fit for, such as Mothers/Men against Senseless Killing (MASK), Communities against Rape and Abuse (CARA), and Crisis Assistance Helping out on the Streets (CAHOOTS). This is all compelling, however the fundamental message of Maher's text ends up being an anticapitalist one: police are both a symptom and a perpetuating factor of our contemporary bind; they exist to ‘manage’ the inequalities of racial capitalism rather than addressing their root cause. Hence, abolishing the police, Maher argues, requires abolishing capitalism.
This I ultimately agree with, and though I would expect this from a book published by Verso (which I read for precisely this kind of thing), I nonetheless feel that this aspect of the text ultimately limits its discursive power. Namely, leftists will likely already agree with this conclusion, whereas I worry that liberals who would otherwise be open to questioning the legitimacy of the police, will dismiss the excellent arguments and evidence that Maher raises, based on the book’s conclusion as such. This is not helped by the fact that the text sometimes reads like a political manifesto, and that the more imminently realisable and practical solutions (e.g. disaffiliation of police from the labour movement; end to qualified immunity etc.), are interspersed with loftier claims such as abolishing national borders and ending capitalism. These aspects of the text prevent me from recommending it or lending it to my colleagues, for instance, who although left-leaning may be turned off by these more radical sentiments (and in turn realised that I may be more red-under-the-bed, or ‘watermelon’, than previously thought). In other words, I loved this book, but wish that it were slightly more accessible to someone not already comfortable with anticapitalist positions, as I think it would otherwise be a great resource to signpost people to for understanding what is really meant by the need to 'defund' or even abolish the police.
December 30, 2022
The all-American ethos of abolitionism comes through strongly in this text, which Maher acknowledges. The impetus to abolitionist thinking came from the struggle against slavery, which once was an institution that limited the scope for action on the part of (some) human bodies in ways that are analogous to cops and prisons, but how useful is this when it comes to the practical task of thinking through a strategy that takes us from a system which which requires the subordination of people to achieving a state of emancipation?
The American perspective comes across in Maher's of police practice, which he says embodies a structural racism that requires officers to go out onto the streets to 'patrol the boundaries between whiteness and wealth, reinforcing racial and class inequalities in the process.' In the urban areas of the US this must manifest itself as a central feature of policing, but is more dilute in other places. Police practice certainly in the UK is more easily able to represent itself to the public imagination as a public service that keeps criminality at bay. It doesn't require a particularly radical critique of the police to say it doesn't do this particularly well and there is a lot of scope for improvement, but Maher is keen to argue that any such hope of reform is a mirage.
It is a mirage because all the institutions that sustain policing are irredeemably racist, with police associations (sometimes called unions) being singled out for particular condemnation. 'Police Power' emerges from the interactions of these institutions, with the bodies that might be able to effect reform - elected local government - being held hostage by the threat to allow the streets to go to hell. This is a stranglehold that needs to be broken from the ground up and the way to do this is through 'building communities without police.'
He recognises at this point that a paradox exists at the heart of abolitionist struggles, founded on the fact that these only become concrete when faced with particular issues rather than the total transformation of society. The fight against police power hinges on mobilisations against the death penalty, prisons, immigration enforcement - a Brit would add 'sus' laws and cases like the Stephen Lawrence murder, where the interests of Black communities are downplayed by the police. To build a community without police means making policing unnecessary, irrelevant even. But the problem for the Lawrence family was not the irrelevance of the police inquiry into the crime against their son - it was the fact they were refusing to do their job properly.
The US case of the murder of Oscar Grant - a 22 year old Black man killed by a transport police officer whilst pinned to the ground of a train - raised this dilemma for abolitionist a decade ago. Did they favour the arrest, charging, trial and imprisonment of the perpetrator? One faction said this would be inconsistent with the abolitionist case, another, which Maher favoured said it was justified if the demand for prosecution arose from a mass movement. "We can't allow the abolitionist horizon to become an abstract moralism that divides struggles from one another and, more importantly, cuts organisers off from communities in struggle." Amen to that.
For anyone trying to think through these issues outside the dystopia which is modern-day urban USA abolitionism seems an inept way of thinking through the issues. It doesn't help to try and make the case by breaking it down to the bite-size chunks of 'abolish prison' and abolish immigration enforcement'. The case for for doing that in these areas can be made without reference to the sort of policing that does on in communities - and perhaps in some instances even with the support of sections of the police community itself, as units specialising in domestic crime and labour exploitation might demonstrate. This will not add up to building communities without police however. The realistic goal might be building communities where police power is subject to democratic control. Finding a way to formulate that as a concrete demand would be a clearer way to put a demand for a 'non-reformist reform in front of the people.
The American perspective comes across in Maher's of police practice, which he says embodies a structural racism that requires officers to go out onto the streets to 'patrol the boundaries between whiteness and wealth, reinforcing racial and class inequalities in the process.' In the urban areas of the US this must manifest itself as a central feature of policing, but is more dilute in other places. Police practice certainly in the UK is more easily able to represent itself to the public imagination as a public service that keeps criminality at bay. It doesn't require a particularly radical critique of the police to say it doesn't do this particularly well and there is a lot of scope for improvement, but Maher is keen to argue that any such hope of reform is a mirage.
It is a mirage because all the institutions that sustain policing are irredeemably racist, with police associations (sometimes called unions) being singled out for particular condemnation. 'Police Power' emerges from the interactions of these institutions, with the bodies that might be able to effect reform - elected local government - being held hostage by the threat to allow the streets to go to hell. This is a stranglehold that needs to be broken from the ground up and the way to do this is through 'building communities without police.'
He recognises at this point that a paradox exists at the heart of abolitionist struggles, founded on the fact that these only become concrete when faced with particular issues rather than the total transformation of society. The fight against police power hinges on mobilisations against the death penalty, prisons, immigration enforcement - a Brit would add 'sus' laws and cases like the Stephen Lawrence murder, where the interests of Black communities are downplayed by the police. To build a community without police means making policing unnecessary, irrelevant even. But the problem for the Lawrence family was not the irrelevance of the police inquiry into the crime against their son - it was the fact they were refusing to do their job properly.
The US case of the murder of Oscar Grant - a 22 year old Black man killed by a transport police officer whilst pinned to the ground of a train - raised this dilemma for abolitionist a decade ago. Did they favour the arrest, charging, trial and imprisonment of the perpetrator? One faction said this would be inconsistent with the abolitionist case, another, which Maher favoured said it was justified if the demand for prosecution arose from a mass movement. "We can't allow the abolitionist horizon to become an abstract moralism that divides struggles from one another and, more importantly, cuts organisers off from communities in struggle." Amen to that.
For anyone trying to think through these issues outside the dystopia which is modern-day urban USA abolitionism seems an inept way of thinking through the issues. It doesn't help to try and make the case by breaking it down to the bite-size chunks of 'abolish prison' and abolish immigration enforcement'. The case for for doing that in these areas can be made without reference to the sort of policing that does on in communities - and perhaps in some instances even with the support of sections of the police community itself, as units specialising in domestic crime and labour exploitation might demonstrate. This will not add up to building communities without police however. The realistic goal might be building communities where police power is subject to democratic control. Finding a way to formulate that as a concrete demand would be a clearer way to put a demand for a 'non-reformist reform in front of the people.
December 15, 2024
I liked the ideas in this book. I appreciated the sustained argument for abolishing police altogether, but felt like the creative side of the argument was weak. I was hoping Maher would spend more time showing us what the alternative might be. Instead, he gives a few examples and some words on building community. Ya. I know that. But I needed a bigger more sustained vision of what a society without police would look like. Also, as a person living in Canada, I wondered if this was strictly an American problem. He does indicate some global trends, tying the whole thing to global capital, but I was left feeling like the late capitalism he was describing suffers from the plague of American exceptionalism. He also missed an opportunity to outline in detail how police become corrupt from a structural point of view. I was fascinated by the tidbits on training, and wanted to hear more about the ways in which police subjectivity is created. Or how a violent aesthetic creates a filter for the kinds of people attracted to the job. Or even a little more on how capitalism itself creates the base for its violent superstructure. There are a number of details on this latter point, and I found this part the most satisfying, but wanted maybe a more philosophical approach. Lastly, maybe something about the professional side of policing. Without showing how well-intentioned police break bad, the whole thing felt heavily biased. I don't think calling police "pigs" helped his argument.
There was an important argument to be made in this book, but it became too one-sided. I kept thinking while reading, "yeah, okay, but do we really want to place the management of violence in society in the hands of the kinds of tin-pot dictators that tend to populate community organizations? Isn't this an issue about the distribution of power and how the sociopaths in a larger population tend to gravitate to positions of power, even at the community level?" Or to get a little more theoretical, if capitalism creates subjectivities, how does abolishing the police solve the problem of the production of these subjectivities? Wouldn't this simply recreate the same issues but on a more widespread scale? Isn't this tantamount to thinking you can cure cancer using a bandaid?
There was an important argument to be made in this book, but it became too one-sided. I kept thinking while reading, "yeah, okay, but do we really want to place the management of violence in society in the hands of the kinds of tin-pot dictators that tend to populate community organizations? Isn't this an issue about the distribution of power and how the sociopaths in a larger population tend to gravitate to positions of power, even at the community level?" Or to get a little more theoretical, if capitalism creates subjectivities, how does abolishing the police solve the problem of the production of these subjectivities? Wouldn't this simply recreate the same issues but on a more widespread scale? Isn't this tantamount to thinking you can cure cancer using a bandaid?
September 29, 2021
This book has a solid foundation in data and is the most substantive of books I have read on the subject so far. It's range is expansive from non-professionals who "assist" the police to visions of the country as global police. In between DHS, ICE, and border patrol are considered.
Interesting was the section analyzing who the police do not "serve and protect" (blacks, mentally ill, homeless, women, LGBTI) as well as who they do (businesses, whites, property, themselves). And that the phrase itself was coined by an LAPD chief of police known to be a white supremacist as PR in the 60s. Also interesting was his explanations/documentations of proposed reforms that haven't really worked.
What I found especially helpful was the rich detail about alternatives to policing. Many of them were from South American and Mexican communities where there is an underlying alternative indigenous code to start from, and Maher does point out that our lack of that will make an alternative in the US more difficult. While I am not yet convinced that individual communities creating their own armed protectors is an ultimate solution, I value having seen the potential explored. One difference that seems important is that these hypothetical and actual protectors are selected by the people themselves,not by some outside agency over them. And can be removed by those same people, the people they are to protect.
Definitely worth reading.
Interesting was the section analyzing who the police do not "serve and protect" (blacks, mentally ill, homeless, women, LGBTI) as well as who they do (businesses, whites, property, themselves). And that the phrase itself was coined by an LAPD chief of police known to be a white supremacist as PR in the 60s. Also interesting was his explanations/documentations of proposed reforms that haven't really worked.
What I found especially helpful was the rich detail about alternatives to policing. Many of them were from South American and Mexican communities where there is an underlying alternative indigenous code to start from, and Maher does point out that our lack of that will make an alternative in the US more difficult. While I am not yet convinced that individual communities creating their own armed protectors is an ultimate solution, I value having seen the potential explored. One difference that seems important is that these hypothetical and actual protectors are selected by the people themselves,not by some outside agency over them. And can be removed by those same people, the people they are to protect.
Definitely worth reading.
December 6, 2021
This is a strong and informed text wherein Maher writes with conviction and draws on a wealth of evidence to support their belief that the police should, and can, be abolished. One of the core arguments that policing is an extension of oppression and imperialism really won me round throughout the course of the book. Where Maher's greater challenge lies is with convincing readers that strong communities make police obsolete and this is where I feel the book is weaker. Maher employs a handful of examples from across the world where communities have united to look after their own people without outside interference, but overall I find Maher's vision of hierarchy-free societies, and how to get there, is more rhetorical than descriptive. I am convinced that policing and the police are more a force for bad than good, however, Maher has left me wondering how building strong communities is firstly possible on a nation-state scale, and secondly, if it is a sufficient antidote to serious crime.
November 8, 2022
This book details the history, present state and growing awareness of unfair policing, and what the future of public safety could be. Being an avid reader of theory on police abolition, this has to be the most comprehensive out of all that I’ve read. If this would be an introductory read for those looking to get familiar with the history, or for a long seasoned reader of race theory - this is a tell all guide book. I appreciate how many perspectives Maher approaches this from; how we have been conditioned to look at police, the truth of how this institution has been upheld, and what we can do about it. One gripe I’ve had with books in the past covering this topic has been their ignorance of what we can do moving forward - this book deals with that head on. It acknowledges that idea and states that we must be the change, we must brainstorm solutions - if books like these had concrete solutions they would’ve already been in practice. Overall, this read is accessible and dense with different viewpoints, give it a try!
January 17, 2023
A major indictment of the contemporary police state. Abolition not reform.
"We live in a world of police, a society built around policing and that presumes their necessity. The world of police is one where those in power see the police as a one-size-fits-all solution for every social problem: poverty, mental health, a lock of opportunity, or inadequate after school sports programs-just send in the police, and if that doesn't work, send in some more. When you're holding a hammer, as the old adage goes, everything looks like a nail.....
And yet, as we will see, the police don't actually help. They don't prevent violence, and they don't make any measurable contribution to public safety. If anything, what the police are most adept at is eating up billions of dollars in resources that could be repurposed to build truly secure communities. The police have wormed their way into the very foundations of American society and work every day to make themselves-and their bloated budgets-seem indispensable."
"We live in a world of police, a society built around policing and that presumes their necessity. The world of police is one where those in power see the police as a one-size-fits-all solution for every social problem: poverty, mental health, a lock of opportunity, or inadequate after school sports programs-just send in the police, and if that doesn't work, send in some more. When you're holding a hammer, as the old adage goes, everything looks like a nail.....
And yet, as we will see, the police don't actually help. They don't prevent violence, and they don't make any measurable contribution to public safety. If anything, what the police are most adept at is eating up billions of dollars in resources that could be repurposed to build truly secure communities. The police have wormed their way into the very foundations of American society and work every day to make themselves-and their bloated budgets-seem indispensable."
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June 28, 2022“To build community is to make the police unnecessary, irrelevant: obsolete. It is to create sanctuaries for all, where women, children, and the elderly are not abused; where disagreements and mental health crises don’t become deadly; where security doesn’t mean exclusion and surveillance of the poorest and most precarious. It is to build educational institutions and care facilities that are expressions of those communities and the equality they embody. And it is to do all of these at once. It means the establishment of liberated territories that are free from police violence because they are free from all violence. It means starting from each and every corner and block, but also refusing to be content with that -expanding across neighbourhoods and cities and creating support networks that can intervene in ever-broader struggles for territory.”
“Policing is global -and so is resistance.”
“Policing is global -and so is resistance.”
September 4, 2021
Most of this book is an effective polemic, largely aimed at lefties coming in to the conversation about the police for the first time. I found the most useful sections to be in the middle, where Maher peppers the reader with statistics that connect police to domestic and other forms of violence. In the latte half of the book, Maher looks at community-based police replacements, from domestic violence prevention netwoks in US cities to the female-led militias in Rojava. This is pretty cursory, and maybe slightly rose tinted, but it is refeshing.
I also appreciated Maher's pragmatism: a world without police might not perfect, he asserts, but the question is, will it be worse than this?
I also appreciated Maher's pragmatism: a world without police might not perfect, he asserts, but the question is, will it be worse than this?
September 25, 2021
This is one of those books that kind of go into greater detail on things you already know and just say it more fluently and with greater detail. The policing and justice system are interrelated with so much of the current social structure and it’s broken (as is the current political and economic system). Maher will teach you just how this is broken and calls strongly for abolition. What’s really important here is that it just isn’t a utopian idea. What Maher calls for is greater community involvement shows examples how different places have worked though abolition of this incredibly broken system, from police on the streets to the broader incarceration system.
May 25, 2024
Great argument for what is wrong with the police in America and why they need to be abolished.
I wish these kinds of books would give concrete ideas on how a world without police would handle serial killers and serial rapists or white collar crime, like wage theft and tax evasion. I know the cops don't stop those things before they happen, but they (sometimes) stop them from continuing. Would it just be groups of armed citizens meeting out vigilanty justice? I'm not sure that's the solution we really want.
I still give the book 4 stars because his goal isn't to talk about what is after the police are gone, it's to argue why they need to be abolished in the first place.
I wish these kinds of books would give concrete ideas on how a world without police would handle serial killers and serial rapists or white collar crime, like wage theft and tax evasion. I know the cops don't stop those things before they happen, but they (sometimes) stop them from continuing. Would it just be groups of armed citizens meeting out vigilanty justice? I'm not sure that's the solution we really want.
I still give the book 4 stars because his goal isn't to talk about what is after the police are gone, it's to argue why they need to be abolished in the first place.
August 16, 2024
cw: racism, police violence, rape, sexual assault, and all the other shit things cops do
acab forever. well we all knew, but reading about all the stuff cops (in the us) do is insane. this book made me mad, enraged etc.
i liked that it did show different examples of successful abolitionist projects, however i would have loved to know more of the details. i’ll be doing some more research.
and this books is just very specific to the us context, though i’m sure this can applied to cops all all around the world.
acab forever. well we all knew, but reading about all the stuff cops (in the us) do is insane. this book made me mad, enraged etc.
i liked that it did show different examples of successful abolitionist projects, however i would have loved to know more of the details. i’ll be doing some more research.
and this books is just very specific to the us context, though i’m sure this can applied to cops all all around the world.
January 27, 2023
This book has some good information but for me gets stuck in a polemic that rarely goes past a surface level analysis. The earlier chapters are more coherent in setting out the problems of the police, while later on many alternative strategies are raised but few get more than a quick summary or sentence. I would perhaps give this to a friend sympathetic to and seeking more info on abolition but even then I don’t find the writing very compelling or concise.
November 26, 2023
I think this is an extremely well-researched and well-written case for abolition, and it touches on the nuances of movements and the interconnectedness of liberation in ways that make abolition a future rather than a dream. However, I do think someone without a degree in social movements would have a difficult time deciphering through the academic language. It is definitely a book for academics or those who are already acquainted with social theories.
February 2, 2022
This book didn’t quite land on the premise presented in the title and ends up being mostly just about police violence - a worthy topic, but not what the book claims to be about really. Based on this, I found it a bit less nuanced than The End of Policing that it ended up sharing a lot of ground with.
May 8, 2022
Focuses more on WHY we need to make policing a thing of the past than on concrete solutions for HOW to get there. But it helped me see that police unions do not function as unions but as anti-democratic shields against accountability, prosecution, and civilian oversight.
A lot of well-meaning white folks ask, “Where do I begin in the fight against white supremacy?” I think cops and police unions are a great place to start. Don’t call the cops, don’t collaborate with the cops, and put on political pressure to break your local police union or fraternal organization.
A lot of well-meaning white folks ask, “Where do I begin in the fight against white supremacy?” I think cops and police unions are a great place to start. Don’t call the cops, don’t collaborate with the cops, and put on political pressure to break your local police union or fraternal organization.
December 26, 2022
I picked this book after attending some protests against police brutality to get a different perspective on the police force. It certainly did help me but I am still skeptical about the practicality of the alternatives that the author has offered for police as they are so deeply ingrained in our capitalist societies.
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