The End of Policing
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4.3 • 45 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The best-selling bible of the movement to defund the police in an updated edition
"Urgent, provocative, and timely, The End of Policing will make you question most of what you have been taught to believe about crime and how to solve it."
—James Forman Jr., author of Locking Up Our Own
The massive uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020— by some estimates the largest protests in US history—thrust the argument to defund the police to the forefront of international politics. That case had been put persuasively a few years earlier in The End of Policing by Alex Vitale, now a leading figure in the urgent public discussion over policing and racial justice.
The central problem, Vitale demonstrates, is the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. Drawing on firsthand research from across the globe, he shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing—such as drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs—has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice.
This updated edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the renewed movement to challenge police impunity and shows how we move forward, evaluating protest, policy, and the political situation.
Customer Reviews
Root Causes
Police are asked to do too much. Social work, mental and wellness check-ins, immigration enforcement, and much more. Much of that ask comes from a desire to control populations of people rather than improve the human conditions of communities. Vitals does an excellent job of unpacking the history of policing and how we have come to default to them as the cure all for every social ill.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. When that comes to the police, everyone is a bad actor and excessive & lethal force get used in situations that could be more easily handled by non-police agencies. School resources officers criminalizing bad behavior amongst kids. Mental illness and homelessness being handled with heavy handed force versus trained social work. Drug enforcement that never results in any real end to the war on drugs.
The reliance on police to solve broader social issues results in us neglecting the true causes of these problems to begin with. As a reminder Aristotle defined causes as either Efficient (natural), Formal (momentary, explainable), Final (root). When you really want to fix something we need to fix the Final (root) cause of the problem. Vitale demonstrates through concrete examples how doing just that is often financially effective and more humane than police intervention.
These real solutions require us to face the bitter human realities of inequality that have plagued the US for so long. That is step one before any police reform can take place. Vitale has done an excellent job pulling in real workable solutions with deep citations and follow up recommended reading for those ready to see change. Most importantly, the book provides all of the factual arguments and data needed to start to have conversations with those who think that the thin blue line is the only way.
What the heck
If the author are making huge claims about SWAT teams using seized drug money, I would like it for the author to cite the article, civil complaint, or case that points to this. I will finish reading this book, but there are a ton of red flags.