We need a model of harm prevention that favours 'investment in non-punitive visions of care in order to make for a truly safer society', StopWatch members Holly Bird, Lucy Bryant, and Habib Kadiri write in Political Quarterly.
Drawing upon the police defunding arguments* from other scholars in recent years, their article addresses the concern that from austerity policies to the Met commissioner's move to withdraw officer support from mental health emergencies, the political climate may have induced a modest de facto defunding approach to policing in some ways.
The authors go on to argue that to adopt a truly holistic approach to defunding, we must look beyond measures such as officer withdrawal from some services or reductions in forces' budgets and towards investment in harm prevention and non-harmful services free of police involvement in order to fully realise the potential of the concept.
The abstract reads:
In May 2023, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley announced the withdrawal of his officers from attending mental health emergencies, under the new policy Right Care, Right Person (RCRP). In some sense, the move highlights that the police role and remit is not a settled, immovable social fact, and as such, this development, in some limited sense, lends support to the ‘defund the police’ argument. However, defunding done properly requires more than simply withdrawing personnel from a procedural response to an emergency. The article argues that this potentially transformative moment must be capitalised on through an holistic approach to harm prevention—one which seriously demotes police involvement in favour of investment in non-punitive visions of care in order to make for a truly safer society.
You can access the article page and / or download an archive copy from the links below.
* Defund – not defend – the police: A response to Fleetwood and Lea. Megan McElhone, Tom Kemp, Sarah Lamble and JM Moore
* Drugs, race, and defunding the police: Daring to dream. Benson Egwuonwu, Habib Kadiri, Michael Shiner