Power over Policing | Boston Review

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Power over Policing

As Minneapolis agrees to disband its police force and Denver votes unanimously to remove police from its public schools, police abolition has entered the public consciousness with full force and considerable support. Alongside select archival essays, this special project features lawyers, activists, historians and more responding to the demands of the 2020 uprisings. They not only boldly imagine an abolitionist future without police and prisons, but outline the steps needed to get us there.

Race, Science & Nature

Race, Policing, and the Limits of Social Science

Studying the social world requires more than deference to data. In some cases, it may even require that we reject findings—no matter the prestige or sophistication of the technical apparatus on which they are built.

Race

Police and the License to Kill

Detroit police killed hundreds of unarmed Blacks in response to the civil rights movement. Their ability to get away with it reveals why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound to fail, and how we can do better.

Matthew D. Lassiter

Race

Police Reform Doesn’t Work

A century of failed liberal attempts at policing reform in Minneapolis supports the view that none of the city council’s current proposals will prevent there from being another George Floyd.

Race

Getting to Freedom City

As a culture of protest took hold in 1960s LA, communities of color also prioritized a radical tradition of care, emphasizing mutual aid, community control, and the transformative power of art and politics.

Robin D. G. Kelley

Gender & Sexuality, Law & Justice

Violence Cannot Remedy Violence

Instead of deterring sexual violence, criminalization has empowered policing and punishment. To prevent both sexual and state-inflicted abuse, we must embrace restorative justice.

Judith Levine, Erica R. Meiners

Gender & Sexuality, Law & Justice

Police Sexual Violence Is Hidden in Plain Sight

Forms of gender-specific violence are baked into the structure of law enforcement. Reform efforts will fail until we eliminate police discretion over women’s bodies.

Anne Gray Fischer

Law & Justice, Race

How the Law Killed Ahmaud Arbery

In many states, legal regimes sanction the predictable murder of innocent black men. Justice will not be served until the law changes.

Joseph Margulies

Law & Justice, Politics

The Problem Isn't Just Police—It's Politics

In this interview, sociologist Alex Vitale explains how the policing crisis in the United States begins with politics—the decision to embrace neoliberal austerity and to turn the social problems it creates over to police.

Alex Vitale, Scott Casleton

Law & Justice

Getting Judges on the Side of Abolition

Success in transforming the criminal justice system will depend on convincing judges to shift how they relate to—and rely upon—police in their criminal courtrooms.

Law & Justice, Race

How Police Abuse the Charge of Resisting Arrest

We must reject the current legal regime under which resisting arrest is so widely accepted as a justification for police brutality and officer shootings.

Lisa Cacho, Jodi Melamed

Law & Justice

Policing the World

Since World War II, the United States has spread its style of policing—and police technology—around the world as a way to exert control. This link between modern policing and the national security state means they will have to be democratized together.

Law & Justice

Accept Nothing Less Than Police Abolition

As post-Katrina New Orleans illustrates, even ambitious attempts to reform police leave intact the structures of racial violence. Worse yet, such efforts drain public money that could instead have been invested in caring for communities.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

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