Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Police problems

Ferguson. It's a name mentioned quite a bit in the past few months. Various terms have been thrown about, accusations and misinformation. One thing, however, stands as a fact: The increasing militarization of the police. Their justification for this is that they're needed to protect against the rising tide of criminals- after all, you don't want a scary man with a gun beating you up, now do you? While many ideas for how to reduce police militarization are tossed around, none of them have actually had any effect. They're all quick-fix solutions that don't address root causes, they're akin to slapping a band-aid onto a stab wound and saying it's all better.  Some are even worse options, promoting vigilantism because apparently everyone is batman now (Though a town full of batmen would be pretty sick). To address the issue at the beginning of the pipe instead of the end of the pipe of brutality, what we need to do is take a look at why we need police in the first place. The answer to that question is fairly obvious: to keep us safe from the evil law-breakers. This is where the problem is. The "evil" law-breakers. In order to justify more police power, there needs to be more and more criminals.  

The American penitentiary system, by many accounts, has failed.  However, I think it's succeeded beautifully for its intended purpose: Producing more criminals. The system incentivizes lesser, non-violent criminals to commit larger and more harmful crimes by cutting their employability and potential paycheck by 40%, in addition to exposing them to in-prison gangs and criminal groups. This locks them into a life of crime, and ravages the local economy of various neighborhoods, continuing this morbid cycle of producing criminals. That's exactly what the state needs though, to justify increased police power. Police power is the most directly observable form of state control, which is control that only benefits those sitting at the top of the system. Police industries are a boon for America's war economy, not to mention being useful for subjugating the people. 

Overall, the difficult transition we need to make isn't one that directly has to do with police. It's prison reform. Focusing our penitentiary system on rehabilitation and reducing crime in positive ways instead of negative ones is critical to breaking down the growing police state that's becoming America. This is what's needed to prevent another Ferguson. 

No comments:

Post a Comment