I can’t remember a period when I have learned more about American society than during the last few years. The anti-racist, anti-police protests of the last few weeks have been particularly provocative. As he has for a long time, Ta-Nehisi Coates has been one of my main teachers, particularly on issues like reparations. The other day, I listened to Ezra Klein and Coates place anti-policing into larger themes in political theory; and they have got me reviewing some of my most basic assumptions. I’d like to invite you to think along with me as I try to absorb their ideas into my own.
In my freshman year of college I was assigned Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbs. Its central thesis was that people are easily frightened and naturally defensive. Anticipating the aggression of others, Hobbs tells us, people attack first. But they never achieve complete security and keep on attacking until they control everything, until a dictator, a Leviathan, reigns supreme. In other words, we need a dictator to establish and sustain peace in human societies.
While observing protests against police violence, I can’t help notice that Hobbs’ dark notions may have been the foundation of “civil society” through the centuries. It certainly seems like the basis for the nation-state, which gains its power and legitimacy by holding a monopoly on the use of force. Anyone else attempting to use force or violence is considered criminal. This is true in democracies as well as authoritarian societies. The state’s use of force is said to maintain the peace, which then permits us to build our communities, regulate our commerce, even establish the boundaries for families. When violence appears the state is permitted, required, to step in to protect us.
And the United States, like all empires, has extended the idea of a power monopoly to include the world. Under the benign guise of “American Exceptionalism,” we sometimes come close to believing that we should police the entire world to insure the safety of our particular society.
Annie Lowrey’s Atlantic article, “Defund the Police,” quickly sketches how these ideas play out in contemporary society, particularly in the United States.
“…the United States has an extreme budget commitment to prisons, guns, warplanes, armored vehicles, detention facilities, courts, jails, drones, and patrols—to law and order, meted out discriminately… “
Comparing ours to the budgets of other “advanced” nations, the U.S.’s commitment to a Hobbsian ideal comes clear:
“…the U.S. spends twice what Europe does on the military. It spends more on domestic public-safety programs than virtually all of its peer nations, double what Singapore spends in GDP terms. It locks up millions, with an incarceration rate many times that of other NATO countries.”
By comparison:
“It has an equally extreme (negative) budget commitment to food support, aid for teenage parents, help for the homeless, child care for working families, safe housing, and so on. It feeds the former and starves the latter.”
Yet it is reasonable to argue for a relationship between the two — that this extremely low budget allotment is at least indirectly responsible for much of the violence and criminality in our nation.
Donald Trump is among the least ambivalent proponents of the Hobbsian world view. He urges police to “dominate” the streets. He tells them to forget the niceties and to emphasize brutality in order to teach the bad guys—and the onlookers – unforgettable lessons. And like dictators around the world, he trumpets encouragement to “lock up” his political opponents.
With Lowrey, we should ask: Even if this Hobbsian approach seem dark and cruel, does it at least work? As you can guess from the title of her article, the answer is no.
“…America’s murder rate is still higher than the average among member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and about four times the rate in Canada. The number of rapes, adjusted to the size of the population, is four times higher than it is in Denmark. Robberies are more than twice as common as they are in Poland. Gun violence is rampant; deaths and injuries from firearms among children are considered “a major clinical and public health crisis.” And Americans absorb far, far more violence from police officers. As a Guardian investigation demonstrated, the police shot dead 55 people in 24 years in England and Wales. There were more fatal police shootings in the first 24 days of 2015 in the U.S.”
Christy E. Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law School, puts a fine point on the ineffectuality of our massive police vigilance: “…making 10 million arrests per year and mass incarceration have not provided the public safety we want, and never will.”
Today, right in front of our eyes, the Hobbsian theory is being challenged, not so much by philosophers as by the burgeoning movement to defuse and defund police power in the United States. This challenge, at its most powerful, is neither defensive nor defiant. It returns to the basic question: Would people really be more violent if left to their own devices, with a minimal police force? And then, suppose those funds were redirected to support and affirm community life?
Beneath these questions lay another: What if our “civil society” has it wrong, or at least not completely right? Suppose sociability and communality are baked into our DNA as deeply — or even more deeply as fear? Or, alternatively, what if we aren’t motivated primarily by what we call basic instincts — “human nature?” What if social context is a more powerful driver of human behavior? When you ask this question, what follows is another: What kinds of social contexts might we then design to encourage prosocial responses even to human insecurity and fear?
Ezra Klein raised this point recently in that conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates. When his child acts up (anti-social behavior), he says, he doesn’t strike back. He soothes, loves, and emotionally contains. All parents know this. Almost every one of us has held a colicky baby tightly to our chests until they can contain themselves. Why can’t society try to follow this same premise? So let’s take a very brief look at how that might work.
I won’t dwell on the obviously transformative power that good education, safe housing, and accessible healthcare wield in reducing criminal activity. Let’s cast these services as human rights and fund them accordingly. And let’s see them as a way to hold people to our chests, as though they were neighbors or even family.
What about prisons? Norwegian jails, for instance, operate as a kind of fostering – rather than punitive – institution. Yes, they incarcerate, but they are provide reasonable living facilities and feature educational opportunities. Partly as a result, it seems, the recidivism rate is much, much lower than we find in U.S, “criminal justice” systems. We can do this, too. And, of course, we can stop arresting and jailing vast number of our people, and particularly people of color, particularly those who have not committed violent offenses. To do this, however, without also providing goods and services to individuals and communities, designed precisely in ways that residents want their help packaged, would be folly.
So yes, as the protestors say, let’s defund the police. Let’s reduce police responsibility and presence in arenas for which they are ill-trained and for many, temperamentally ill- suited. And let’s redirect funds to people and organizations that are suited to the work of community health and cohesion.
Many policemen agree. They don’t pretend to be mental health workers, child-protection workers, or medics. They don’t want these jobs. Let’s replace them with people better equipped to manage mental health issues and social conflict as they arise in families and local communities. What if we empower those who are trained in family and community mediation? What if we learn to identify and train people within communities who naturally build bridges, defuse conflict? And suppose we put an exponential amount of resources to support and organize their efforts.
We have long lived with the notion that the punishment should fit the crime. What a vengeful idea! What about this one instead: Let our social responses fit the problems and the opportunities that arise. Can we do much worse than putting millions and particularly millions of Black men and drug addicts in jail? We now know that it does them — and us — little good.
I have learned, over my many years, that people do not respond well to intimidation, hostility, and violence; they almost invariably breed more defensiveness and more violence. People do respond well — for the most part — to friendliness, kindness, and respect. I cannot imagine why we wouldn’t want to try to largely, though not entirely, replace policing with skilled friendliness. Think about what a grand social experiment that would be!
Barry Dym 