as with so many foundering social institutions, I think policing suffers from being a locked-in system: @Harkaway's The Blind Giant does a really great job of explaining what these are, but basically it's "complex thing too long entrenched to remove or change without Big Issues."
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there's a great deal of merit in the idea of outsourcing a lot of what cops are currently expected to handle to mental health professionals and social workers, but the latter system especially also has a great number of entrenched biases of its own, especially re: racism.
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what this means, frustratingly, is that the only way forward is to accept that anything we do at this point won't magically make everything perfect, and that change will, of necessity, involve the introduction of new problems - but we CAN still have progress.
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but first, we need to acknowledge how fundamentally broken the current standard is. it makes no sense that traffic offenses, domestic disputes and sexual violence are all handled by one kind of person whose primary tools are handcuffs and a gun. it's utter lunacy.
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do we still need people to respond to and handle violent and organised crime? yeah, sadly! the human race kinda sucks on that front! but, dear god, it should be a WAY more specialised, highly trained, transparently monitored, sparsely deployed and FUCKING SELECTIVE JOB that now!!
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here's the other thing, though: policing is what it is in large part because our notion of justice is vastly more vested in punishment and incarceration than in reparations and rehabilitation. there's no point swapping cops for social workers if jail is still the go-to.
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what the fuck does jail do? it takes a bunch of ppl whose crimes vary from serial rape & murder to petty theft & fraud, and puts them all in a big cage under the control of people and corporations who are, let's be real here, almost cartoonishly sadistic and evil. that's it.
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long term, this accomplishes literally nothing but a) more violence and abuse; b) a high rate of recidivism, because almost nothing is done to help reform or rehab even the mildest offenders, who are then pushed out of most jobs on release; c) a market for prison labour -
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- which, best case scenario, means prison corps can undercut companies that could provide real work & wages by "paying" their workers a pittance & thus saving $$, and worst case is actual, literal slavery, which is still legal in the US if in punishment for a crime. seriously.
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it wasn't that long ago that US prisons were "volunteering" their inmates to fight wildfires in california, some of them juvenile institutions; no inmates were paid, nor did they earn any credits/training that would help them become firefighters on release.
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and lest you think "ah, but I'm not American, my prison system doesn't work like that, we're fine!" please be aware that many of the other issues I'm outlining with What Policing Is still apply! yes, even in your progressive country! because it's STILL A LOCKED-IN SYSTEM.
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anyway, it's late and I'm cranky, but there is literally no good goddamned reason for policing & prisons to function as they do except that we've always done it kinda that way, and now it all looks Too Hard to change without admitting the degree to which We Really Fucked Up.
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but, as the saying goes, the best time to change was yesterday; the second-best time is now. just remember that progress with a locked-in system won't always be linear or flawless, and that sometimes, ripping the whole goddamn thing out by the roots might just be your best bet.
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