The End of Policing
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 Front cover | |
| Author | Alex S. Vitale |
|---|---|
| Subject | Police abolitionism |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Verso Books |
Publication date | October 10, 2017 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 288[1] |
| ISBN | 9781784782894 |
The End of Policing is a 2017 book by the American sociologist Alex S. Vitale. In it, Vitale argues for the eventual abolition of the police, to be replaced variously by decriminalization or with non-law enforcement approaches, depending on the crime. Vitale argues that the function of police is to uphold inequalities of class, gender, race, or sexuality.
The book was met with mixed critical reception by academics and reviewers, including praise for Vitale's writing style and level of research, but criticism that his suggested political approaches needed further development. The book was variously criticized as not arguing against all forms of policing, or as failing to acknowledge research which suggests that police reduce the rate of crime.
Author Alex S. Vitale is a sociologist at Brooklyn College.[2] He began writing The End of Policing in 2014, drawing from his 1990s volunteering for the Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco.[3] The book was published on October 10, 2017 by Verso Books.[1] At the time of its publication, Brooklyn College held a panel with Vitale and Heather Mac Donald, who argued that modern policing is not institutionally racist.[4]
Following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, a public discourse about defunding or abolishing the police led to Vitale appearing in a wide range of news media. Verso temporarily made the e-book copy of The End of Policing available for free. It had been downloaded 200,000 times by June 17, 2020.[3]
Synopsis
The book is about police in the contemporary United States and the nature of policing. Vitale argues that the purpose of police is not to deal with instances of social ills, but to uphold inequalities in society on the axes of class, gender, race and sexuality.[5] Historically, Vitale writes, the police have facilitated slavery and colonialism and suppressed workers' rights movements.[6] He believes that the conditions for crime arise due to the implementation of conservative policies such as support for a supply-side economics model, austerity, redlining and union busting.[4] Topics covered by the book include the criminalization of the mentally ill, homeless people and sex workers; policing of schools; the war on drugs; and border policing by the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the military and the National Guard.[5][7]
Vitale believes that policing should be disbanded in full, with decriminalization of some crimes such as sex work and drug usage, and public infrastructure or non-law enforcement approaches for other crimes. For instance, government agencies and private companies could provide homeless people with permanent housing. He recommends drug rehabilitation centers for addicts, improved education and a different employment system, as well as more mental health care availability and open borders.[5][1][7]
Vitale writes that police are trained by private companies in highly militarised ways. He says that diversifying the police force or requiring them to wear body cameras will not change the underlying systemic racism in police procedures.[5][7] On the topic of gangs, he proposes that police and prisons do not deter gang involvement and that gangs are not composed only of black and Latino people and may not have centralized leadership structures.[5] Analyzing the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933, Vitale writes that the amount of illegal alcohol consumed remained constant even as police increased their numbers of arrests.[1] In the last chapter, Vitale says that the police have always served a political role, giving examples of police forces under dictatorships and U.S. police with regards to the Red Scares, COINTELPRO and surveillance of other social movements.[7]