But There's A Better Way - Tumblr Posts

Question: I fully agree that ACAB, but I've always wondered what police forces should be replaced with, seeing as how organizations like the KKK and all these racist militias like the Minutemen (and of course, Zimmerman) are technically private citizens.

That is an excellent question, Anonymous!  While most of us take their existence for granted, the truth is that the concept of having a police force is fairly modern, dating back to the early 19th century.  Prior to that, many societies relied on full-community participation to ensure that its members behaved themselves.  Neighbours helped each other.  Some societies formalized this concept somewhat.  Medieval England used something called the “frankpledge system,” wherein all males over the age of 12 would form small groups of ten, all of whom swore an oath to capture and detain members of their own clans who committed a crime.  This was eventually replaced by a constabulary system where all males would serve as constables for one year, keeping watch on their community.  If something was amiss, they could sound the alarm and all males in the community would come to their aid.  It wasn’t until the population explosion that accompanied the Industrial Revolution that we began to see what we would recognize as modern police forces.  There are examples of similar systems existing even today.  In the Spanish village of Marinaleda (pop. 3,000) there are no police.  When their last police officer retired, the village didn’t replace him, instead choosing to focus its resources on ensuring its citizens’ needs are taken care of and coming together as a community when problems arise instead of calling the police.  Remarkably, crime is nearly nonexistent there.There’s also this article outlining six ways to reduce, if not eliminate, our reliance on police.  Bolstering mental health resources, decriminalizing non-violent offences (especially drug offences), deploying unarmed mediation/intervention teams, and other ideas would greatly reduce and possibly eliminate our reliance on armed police.  If any of these ideas - or a combination of them - resulted in even a 1% drop in the incarceration rate in America, 20,000 fewer people would be in prison and $800 million in tax funds could be spent on better things.