A video of police officer Derek Chauvin causing the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 went viral on social media and led to widespread protest across the US. It also reignited calls to ‘defund the police’. But what does that actually mean?
The first thing we need to recognise is that groups calling for reformation of the criminal justice system and the defunding of the police are NOT demanding all prisons be closed and police officers sacked but rather that social problems should be addressed by diverting money into more appropriate methods of protecting and serving the public, i.e. public services.
What if we replaced ‘defunding the police’ with ‘ensuring there are good quality services in the community so that somebody in crisis gets the help they need, rather than getting arrested by the police and taken to a cell’?
Despite successive governments expanding policing powers and prison building programmes in an attempt to ‘police away’ social problems, campaigners argue that there has been no significant improvement in public safety. Diverting funds into public services to address social inequality and the drivers of criminality would better result in a decline of criminal activity.
The YMCA have reported that every region across England and Wales has seen funding for youth services cut by more than 60% since 2010, with the North East experiencing an average of 76%. This loss of safe spaces can be directly linked to the growth of knife crime, mental health difficulties and isolation among young people. This approach of neglecting the needs of young people and using criminalisation as a first resort for the social problems they face has been heavily criticised.
With over 85,000 inmates, the UK prison system is full. Speaking at the Tory Party conference this month, Secretary of State for Justice Alex Chalk confirmed that the government will go ahead with plans to rent overseas capacity to cope with the numbers. UK prisons are disproportionately populated with people with mental health problems, special educational needs or experience of school exclusion. The Centre for Mental Health found that nine out of ten prisoners had at least one mental health or substance misuse problem.
However since the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 there have been drastic cuts to addiction services. Funding for drug and alcohol treatment has transferred from central government to local authorities already hit with real terms budget cuts of 40%. It is a bitter twist that the police are left to deal with problems caused by cuts in public services - although for how much longer? Earlier this year, the government announced plans to drastically reduce the number of mental health callouts the police respond to.
The drive to defund the police is not to simply take funding away from an essential service but rather a redistribution of that funding to provide more effective public safety by addressing the causes of criminality in the first instance - increased access to and provision of social housing, mental health services, post-16 education, youth services, domestic violence services and so on. The best way to create a safer community for everyone is through investment in our health, social and educational systems and with the Institute for Government reporting that short-term policy making has trapped public services in a ‘doom loop’, maybe now is the time for a new approach.
Adapted from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/02/britain-defund-the-police-black-lives-matter
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