What Is Police Abolition?

Police abolition includes the creation of community-accountable alternatives to policing. Abolition provides structure to dismantle oppression upheld by policing. You might find it hard to imagine how this would look under our current system, but we know that to arrive at true equality and liberation for all, we must end the institution of policing.

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It All Starts With Laws. 

Politicians write laws, often elected as a direct result of campaigns funded by the wealthy. These donors don’t buy political power to create a world where resources are distributed fairly — they do it to protect their assets and keep labor cheap. Often this requires violence. The police provide this violence.

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What Are the Police?

Police ensure that the state’s rules are obeyed using injury, incarceration, or even death. The police are essentially a state funded gang hired to commit violence against citizens and protect private property. They have power over citizens that currently, citizens don’t hold equally over police. Remember that police are people, and no one person should hold that much power over another. Only the word of the state gives them this right, and nothing but a mass movement of working people can correct this imbalance of power.

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Don’t Police Perform a Needed Function?

Only because we fund police instead of funding our communities! Maybe you were thinking of the noble things they’re asked to do, like:

• assist fire departments

• investigate crimes

• manage hostage situations

• find and recover missing people

• control and manage traffic

• intervene in mental health crises

• deescalate domestic conflicts

• respond to ODs/public intoxication

• assist homeless people

• animal control 

• assist rape/sexual assault victims

But there are specialists in every one of these fields who do these tasks more skillfully! Police receive remarkably little training in each of these areas. However, in Memphis, the funding for these skilled professionals has been redirected to police payroll, taser-mounted riot shields, and military grade weapons.

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Can We Really Replace the Police? 

Yes! The police have not always existed. A society without police could commit to addressing the root causes of crime, such as poverty, lack of mental health care, and issues like trauma and addiction. Society could focus on preventing the causes of crime, and addressing crime with restitution and rehabilitation, not punishment.

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What’s the Alternative?

One model is a voluntary Community Self-Defense Team system in which members receive training from local volunteers in how to help and protect their community nonviolently, including when and how to bring in experts for special circumstances. Specialists would handle special situations, paid with money we used to spend on riot gear, etc. Team members would be accountable to, and recallable by, the community.

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This rotating group of people then take responsibility for keeping their community safe by walking neighborhoods, responding to calls for help and de-escalating conflicts.
 

Volunteers and specialists functionally supporting a safe society wouldn’t be a special class above or against the public they supposedly serve, unlike police 

forces.

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So What’s Next?

The system is not broken, it's working as intended. Only we can change it. We can begin to build capacity for a liberated future through transformative justice, community accountability and other alternatives to police and prisons. In the present, we can decriminalize nonviolent offenses and end cash bail, mandatory minimums, immigration detention, the school-to-prison pipeline, life sentences and the death penalty.

A better future for all of us requires all of us working together to create it. We invite you to join us. Another world is possible.

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