[D66] The End of Policing

[R.O.]

https://cdn-ed.versobooks.com/images/000014/321/9781784782924-eee743ba813f726f0ef78c27fdea782c.jpg

The End of Policing
by Alex S. Vitale <https://www.versobooks.com/authors/1660-alex-s-vitale>

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself

*LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER*

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality 
and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the 
conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on 
accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. 
Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or 
in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of 
modern policing itself.

This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted 
origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the 
expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community 
empowerment, social justice—even public safety. Drawing on 
groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually 
every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale 
demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very 
problems it is supposed to solve.

In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation of 
policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative justice, and 
harm reduction—has led to a decrease in crime, spending, and injustice. 
The best solution to bad policing may be an end to policing.


    Reviews

“/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, Professor, CUNY Graduate Center, Co-Founder of 
Critical Resistance, author of /Golden Gulag/

“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, /Nation/

“/The End of Policing/'s great strength lies in demonstrating that if 
the shape of American policing is historical, it is also contingent. We 
could have made different choices regarding how we set about securing 
the public against the array of threats that confront it, and – 
refreshingly, at this moment of general despair – Vitale believes we 
still can.”

– Adam Greenfield, /LA Review of Books/

“Deeply researched, but also vibrantly and accessibly written,/The End 
of Policing/ is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the 
dire state of policing today. Alex Vitale shows compellingly that as 
long as we ask the police to shore up a fundamentally unequal and 
dysfunctional social order, superficial ‘reforms’ won’t do much to help. 
And he offers concrete alternatives aimed at restoring communities and 
getting police out of the business of trying to contain social problems 
that they cannot—and should not—control.”

– Elliott Currie, Professor, University of California, Irvine, author of 
/Crime and Punishment in America/

“An extremely vital book on policing. Should be assigned at all police 
academies. If only the Philando Castile jurors had read this.”

– Jeffrey Fagan, Director of Columbia Law School's Center for Crime, 
Community, and Law

“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 Jr., Professor, Yale Law School and author of/Locking Up 
Our Own/

“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, author of /The Flamethrowers/

“In a tightly constructed monograph filled with reform suggestions, 
Vitale decries the evolution of police agencies as tools of the white 
establishment to suppress dissatisfaction among the have-nots. A clearly 
argued, sure-to-be-controversial book.”

– /Kirkus/

“In a chapter on each issue, Vitale sets out the problem in depth, 
explores the liberal view of reforms that seek only to remove the worst 
excesses of police conduct and to restore the legitimacy of using force 
in the interests of society, and then offers ideas for alternatives.”

– /The Network for Police Monitoring/

“Vitale’s amassing of trenchant facts into an enticing intellectual 
framework makes /The End of Policing/ a must-read for anyone interesting 
in waging and winning the fight for economic and social justice.”

– Michael Hirsch, /Indypendent/

“/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/

“A welcome challenge to reformist thinking and a powerful argument 
against social and economic injustice, inequality and racism.”

– /LSE Review of Books/

“Suggests a radical alternative that, on the one hand, abolishes corrupt 
and lethal police policies designed to contain the racialised poor and, 
on the other, develops and sustains safer communities.”

– /Race & Class/

“Offers a convincing argument that the traditional roles played by 
police forces have been largely counter-productive.”

– /Morning Star/

“A compelling critique of modern policing.”

– Peter Stauber, /counter fire/

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