Policing
Force Multipliers
ICE could never have created a large-scale deportation machine if it hadn’t enjoyed the voluntary assistance of local law enforcement.
policing
44 posts in ‘policing’
A closer look
West Coast Progressives Did Not Cause This Crisis
A revival of War on Drugs–style punishment aims to score political points against liberal cities—but it won’t make us safer, and it won’t reduce opioid deaths.
A closer look
The Algorithmic School-to-Prison Pipeline
With little transparency or oversight, technology is being used to flag youth as risks to public safety and deciding who is surveilled, arrested, and confined.
law & policy
What makes someone a gang member? For police, nearly anything.
In most of the country, police can catalog you as a gang member for virtually any reason—and you might never even know until you’re being punished for it.
A closer look
Carceral AI is here. It’s time to fight back.
Facial recognition is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, AI is being used to monitor social media, track ICE targets, and classify swaths of the population as “future” criminals.
interventions
The ICE Reformation Trap
Professionalization will not make immigration policing less violent. It will only increase its capacity, authority, and scope.
A closer look
Stop Cop City’s Deep Roots
For 150 years, Atlanta has endured racist policing that has served the interest of the city’s economic elite. The fight to resist this “Atlanta way” goes back just as far.
A closer look
United in Hate
White civilians often spontaneously cooperate in acts of racial hatred. It’s a web of racist solidarity that Black people know all too well.
Policing
Injured, Not Dead
After Jason Salters was violently attacked by NYPD officers simply for doing his job, he discovered how little accountability exists for non-fatal incidents of police violence.
poetry
An Essay in Acrostic: P.O.L.I.C.E.
“They tell us we have the right to take up / space. But they come in armor and shields / that say otherwise.”
advocacy
The Police Don’t Protect Us
A decade of increasingly sexphobic lawmaking has left sex workers worse off, unable to keep themselves safe and more likely to be victims of police violence.
In Depth
Turning Death into a Commodity
ShotSpotter has leveraged gun violence into a multimillion-dollar business that promises safety but delivers only increased policing and drain on the public’s resources.
racial capitalism
Extracting Police
Violent policing is not a bug of capitalist societies but a feature. To end our dependence on it, we must first understand its connection to exploitation.
interventions
The President and the Police
A second Trump presidency may render police accountability elusive. But, as before, people and communities can and will fight back.
racial capitalism
Mass Criminalization as Religion
The deification of whiteness and property has long legitimized the containment of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples.
Policing
A Nation of Cop Cities
The push by Atlanta and other cities to build large police training facilities follows on a long history of armories as both symbols and manifestations of the state’s power.
abolition
The Transformation of Justice
What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?
A closer look
A Pattern of Injustice
The Ferguson report was a landmark. But the Department of Justice needs to do much more to empower communities in the fight to end police abuse.
In Depth
Ferguson’s Pound of Flesh
Ten years ago, the killing of Michael Brown exposed a system that extracts what little wealth marginalized people have. That system is still here.
activism
The World Ferguson Made
Three activists from 'the Michael Brown generation' reflect on what changed in St. Louis after the uprisings—and what didn’t.
excerpt
Dare to Report
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
Policing
The ‘Bad Guys’
Police academies socialize officers into an us-versus-them mentality—particularly when it comes to activists—and harden them to any attempts at reform.
Policing
Unsafe on Campus
Policing on college campuses falls hardest on formerly incarcerated students, leaving them and the broader community unprotected.
public history
The Promise of Marronage
Stories of Black flight from enslavement continue to offer lessons for radically rethinking public safety beyond policing.
abolition
Abolishing the Family
The fight against police and prisons cannot be separated from the struggle to extend care beyond the limits of the family form.
public history
Urban Warfare and Corporate-Funded Armies
Atlanta’s Cop City is another chapter in the long history of U.S.-based colonialism. The second installment in a two-part series.
advocacy
The Rubik’s Cube of Cop City
The crisis of colonized cities and state criminality. The first installment in a two-part series.
public health
Care and Carceralism
Disentangling medical care from policing, prisons, and other punitive institutions remains an imperative—now more than ever.
books
Show Me Your License
For many immigrant families, even driving to school or the doctor risks a dangerous encounter with the punitive state.
Policing
Making Cops Pay
Ending qualified immunity won’t solve police violence. But making officers feel the sting of their actions in court can get us a step closer to ending it.