I have a new essay up at Anglican magazine The Hour, about the necessity of specificity to expand our moral imagination towards abolition:
The ethical role of the church is to develop moral imagination. The church exists as the first frontier of the kingdom of God, at the boundary between the coming kingdom and the world under the sway of the powers of death. As an outpost of the inbreaking reign of God, the Church’s role is to interpret to the world the new life of grace, the new way of being in freedom, the ultimate liberation of the cosmos. This has aspects beyond the ethical, but on the ethical level, this ultimacy of freedom looses our imagination for new possibilities. To do Christian ethics is precisely to do imaginative ethics, to let the newness and absurdity of the gospel break down the walls in our thinking and nourish new possibilities of love and divine freedom.
For those recently learning about abolition and looking for a 101 guide to defunding and abolishing the police, I’ve gathered some new (and older) basic resources.
What does “defund the police” mean?
Broadly speaking, “defund the police” means “take money away from police budgets and move it to other resources.” “Defund” is proving to be a useful demand for a coalition movement in part because it can mean different things to different people, letting abolitionists and not-yet-abolitionists work together as far as we can. But it’s essential to recognize the abolitionist framing of “defund the police.” The goal is not to “reform” police or to “reimagine” police departments as some new form of law enforcement.
Why “defund” or “abolish” rather than “reform”?
One key abolitionist principle is the distinction between crime (socially constructed, and the model is that a law is broken and so the culprit is caught and punished) vs. harm (focuses on the victim, and how to build structures in our communities that prevent harm from happening in the first place and then address it in ways that promote healing and transformation of the community to stop further harm). Fundamentally, policing as law enforcement addresses crime rather than harm. And as such policing functions more to maintain social control than public safety: see, for example, Alex Vitale, “The police aren’t here to protect you.” Defunding insists on a model of public safety which isn’t primarily about punishing people who break the laws, but about a positive vision of “safety” which promotes meeting the needs of every person.
But even further, history has shown that “reform” of policing doesn’t work. See, for example:
“Reform” has historically meant giving more resources to police departments (for new training, body cameras, etc.) and not challenging their social power. “Community policing” efforts or other rules aimed at police accountability haven’t worked because of the disproportionate influence held by police unions and by police departments, as the arm of the state authorized to use violence. See, for example, Mariame Kaba, “Police ‘reforms’ you should always oppose.” Combating police violence means reducing the systemic power of policing, not just encouraging cops to behave better in a system that leaves power in their hands.
This is why abolitionists emphasize what we call “non-reformist reforms”: reforms that are incremental steps toward abolition that move power, money, and influence out of police departments and back into the wider community. A great chart describing non-reformist reforms is available from Critical Resistance here. Non-reformist reforms, like defunding the police, are a place where abolitionists and non-abolitionists can come together as far as we agree. They harness the immediate need for change as a form of “harm reduction” against police violence, while still being compatible with an eventual goal of abolition.
So what are some non-reformist reforms being proposed right now?
The #8toAbolition campaign has a fantastic set of 8 policy areas where non-reformist reforms can have a real impact and move us toward abolition of policing:
How does this all fit into the broader context of prison abolition?
Abolitionist scholars and organizers, especially Black women, have been developing abolitionist theory for years, largely in the context of prisons. For example:
It’s important to recognize that prisons and policing are both parts of a broader carceral system that functions to maintain social control through coercion, banishment, punishment, and violence. Abolitionists reject this system in favor of models of public safety that are focused on meeting needs, transforming the conditions that lead to harm, and promoting healing when harm has been done.
It’s also important to look critically at possible alternatives through this lens of whether they function by coercion, banishment, punishment, or violence. The “carceral mindset” and carceral structures of the prison-industrial complex have affected other spheres, e.g. in punitive models used in education, or in replacing arrest or incarceration with mandated drug or psychiatric treatment. Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law’s new bookPrison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms (for which, full disclosure, I’m their literary agent) addresses these various carceral systems in detail, and argues for a real transformative alternatives. As Mariame Kaba says, we have to remove the “cop in our heads and the cop in our hearts.” We have to develop an abolitionist imagination to guide us toward better alternatives.
What does public safety without prisons or police look like, though? What do we do about serious violence?
I address the question about violence (what do we do with murderers with rapists if we can’t call the police?) here in our FAQ.
The challenge with alternatives is that different communities will have different needs and different methods for addressing harm. There’s no single alternative. More here: “The ‘Alternative’ to the Prison-Industrial Complex.”
The point of defunding or abolishing the police is to move our money and our collective energies toward supporting local efforts that are already working “outside the system” to reimagine new, compassionate ways of meeting needs and keeping each other safe. That might be putting money into schools or unarmed crisis-response teams or social workers, or any variety of restorative- and transformative-justice programs. Building new forms of community and getting to know and care for one another in our local communities is a form of abolitionist work!
I have recently written a series on the COVID-19 crisis in prisons, the Church’s response, and discerning the call to abolition for The Living Church, and in conjunction with that was interviewed on their podcast as well:
This crisis continues to be most acute for our incarcerated siblings, and I ask for your continued prayers and activism for them. Remember those in prison as though in prison with them (Heb. 13:3).
As our country also grapples with the scourge of police violence against Black people, it is time for every white Christian to turn away from white supremacy and move past promises of reform to a commitment to prison and police abolition. At this time, we hear again God’s words to the prophet Ezekiel: “Why will you die? … For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone.” God has no pleasure in the death occurring from coronavirus in our prisons or the deaths occurring from police violence in our communities — deaths that we are inflicting on each other and ourselves by our reliance on the inhumane practices of racialized policing and incarceration.
It is time for us all to obey the divine command that follows (Ezekiel 18:32): “Turn, then, and live.” Turn to abolition, and live.
This article in Sojourners about the faith community rallying around decarceration, to protect those who are incarcerated during this pandemic and for the sake of public health for all, provides great background, and includes a mention of our work:
Hannah Bowman, founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, says this exercise of decarceration can be a step toward a better system.
“We say [American prisons are] about public safety, but what they’re really about is retribution and banishment, and that’s becoming particularly clear in this COVID-19 crisis,” Bowman said. “Public health is a part of public safety, and what we’re hearing is that having people in prison is a major public health threat to them.”
During this pandemic crisis, we are thinking about and praying especially for those who are incarcerated, and at particular risk from the coronavirus.
The California Coalition for Women Prisoners has made a helpful syllabus of resources relevant to the current situation, prison health care in general, and other topic. Please check it out!
Ours is a hyperbolic age where every meal is expected to be the best and every inconvenience is the worst. A world where my 4 year old has a BFF because his older brother has a BFF, and that second F, for both kids, lasts about 4 days max. The critic James Wood once mockingly reviewed a book, saying that it “exhausts negative hyperbole.” The past few weeks have exhausted negative hyperbole for many people. We are out of it. Plans and pensions and expectations have been changed at the root. Businesses, restaurants, all of institutional sports, schools across the country and the world: shut down. Many places in the world have pared down to the essentials and taken the time to discover what is essential: what do we need?
Lent is a season of getting down to the root of a matter. Fasting is a practice of discerning what we need and leaning on God. Many people have now had social-distancing mandated fasts.
A population that we have as a society shamefully socially distanced is our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our children in jail or prison. As we look at the hospitals, road crews, grocery stores, pharmacies still open, this may be an incredible to look and see that we do not need those isolated cells. In fact, by keep imprisoned populations so tightly together, should an outbreak of the coronavirus take place behind bars, it will be catastrophic. Some farsighted folks around the world have started releasing some folks in jail, but that is not enough.
Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians
Ephesians 5:8 For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light-
Ephesians 5:9 for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.
Ephesians 5:10 Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.
Ephesians 5:11 Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
We don’t need to live as a people in darkness. We don’t need to keep people locked up. We can see the light this season of lent that reconciliation is possible, that hope is possible, that grace is possible for all. As our governments try to respond to the crisis, let us not forget the shackled neighbors that Isaiah calls us to break free.
This is part of our series of posts on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, offering preaching topics and inspiration through intentionally abolitionist readings.
The book of Exodus is my very favorite in the Bible, particularly because of what it reveals about God’s nature: both through the revelation of God’s name and God’s response to the cries of God’s people in bondage, and through God’s longsuffering response in the wilderness.
The pattern, which we see in Exodus 17, goes like this: the people desire to turn back to Egypt, to give up on liberty because of the risk and danger it entails. And rather than punish them, God provides for them. Here, we see that in response to their crying out, God provides water from the rock.
Of course, this mercy is not an entirely consistent pattern in the texts. In Numbers 11, we see God (after providing food in response to the complaints of the Israelites!) send a plague upon them. And even in today’s story of Massah and Meribah, the associated psalm, Psalm 95, reminds us that God is not entirely merciful upon this generation:
95:8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
95:9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
95:10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”
95:11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Yet at the same time, in the telling of Exodus, God’s nature is clearly revealed: when the Israelites ask, “Is God among us or not?” God answers firmly: “Yes!” and meets their needs.
Perhaps there are two lessons here. The first is about the merciful nature of God, who does not respond to evil and unfaithfulness with abandonment, but always first with God’s own faithful provision.
The second is about the difficulty of claiming liberty, a challenge that the Israelites keep failing. How often do we, as we try to build a more just and liberated society, find ourselves falling back into reliance on patterns, systems, and attitudes of punishment and control, because we don’t know what else to do? And when we do that, where can we see God providing for us a new way forward, what we need to continue the gradual fight for the liberation of all?
During Lent our blog is continuing our series of meditations on lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary.
We also have a new devotional, Healing Justice and the Paschal Mystery. As Lent points us toward Holy Week and the narrative of Jesus’ passion, this devotional – built around the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the Great Vigil of Easter – envisions Holy Week and the Passion narrative as a sort of restorative justice process, and considers ways you can use the liturgies of Holy Week to deepen your own practice and understanding of restorative justice. The five pages of this devotional are suitable for use during Holy Week or for ongoing study during the weeks of Lent.
