
The End of Policing
Alex S. Vitale
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Description
"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.
Product Details
Publisher | Verso |
Publish Date | December 07, 2021 |
Pages | 320 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781839763786 |
Dimensions | 7.8 X 5.0 X 0.8 inches | 0.6 pounds |
About the Author
Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last thirty years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Nation, Jacobin, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now!, Vice News, and the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
Reviews
—Adam Greenfield, LA Review of Books
"Unfortunately, neither increased diversity in police forces nor body cameras nor better training make any seeming difference. We need to restructure our society and put resources into communities themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very persuasively."
—Rachel Kushner, New York Magazine
"The End of Policing combines the best in academic research with rhetorical urgency to explain why the ordinary array of police reforms will be ineffective in reducing abusive policing. Alex Vitale shows that we must move beyond conceptualizing public safety as interdiction, exclusion, and arrest if we hope to achieve racial and economic justice."
—Ruth Wilson Gilmore
"Offers a compelling digest of the dynamics of crime and law enforcement, and a polemic against the militarization of everything. Vitale calls for a dismantling of our very notion of the police: a sprawling, untethered bureaucracy permitted to use lethal force and unaccountable to the people."
—E. Tammy Kim, The Nation
"Challenging standard accounts of how to reform policing, Alex Vitale argues that true safety demands directing resources away from police and prisons and towards economic development, education, and drug treatment. 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, author of Locking Up Our Own
"The End of Policing is that holiday argument book, the relatively brief stack of facts you can hand to a relative who still talks about those nice guys who helped out with the flat tire and doesn’t see why any lives have to matter more than they already do. A thorough rinsing of the American criminal justice system."
—Sasha Frere-Jones, 4 Columns
"For readers seeking an overview of the problems with American policing ... bracing and thorough."
—Sam Adler-Bell, The New York Times Book Review
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