Introduction

The Black Lives Matter movement galvanised protest movements against police and state violence around the globe. A common theme in many protests was the demand to ‘defund the police’. One of the motivations for writing this book is the increasing attention the idea of defunding or divesting from police forces is gaining in mainstream politics and media. We need to seriously consider what is required to fundamentally change the way policing operates. The option of divestment opens up this discussion. Defund the Police is not another book about police reform. It is an engagement in the contemporary debate on the politics and possibilities of police abolition. To date, the majority of popular and academic literature in policing studies, law reform, and criminology has been preoccupied with conventional ideas related to top-down police reform. These reforms include efforts, for example, to recruit diverse and inclusive police officers, to implement cultural-awareness training, to introduce technical solutions like the use of body cameras, to place limitations on the use of force, and to introduce police-led programmes aimed at cultivating localised or community policing. We have had decades of these types of reforms, and part of the explosion of protest internationally is driven by the profound sense of frustration at the inability of police to reform themselves.

The protests against police violence and demands to defund the police in the US in 2020 were met with various responses from local, city, and state governments – for example, during the course of 2020 the Mayor of New York promised a $1 billion reduction in the NYPD budget; in Minneapolis the City Council voted to disband the Police Department, and several Minneapolis schools rescinded contracts with the Minneapolis police; the LA city council approved a cut to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) budget of $150 million; Portland, Oregon shifted $4.8 million from the police to community safety initiatives. Many of these budgetary changes were later rescinded. Although the organisational structure and funding of the police in the US is different from many other countries – there are more than 17,000 local, state, federal, and specialist law enforcement agencies – the call to defund the police has raised important questions about the nature of policing, including whether police reform is possible, and perhaps more importantly, questions about our social priorities, the values we want to foreground, and the type of communities and society we aspire to create and live in.