The student authors at McGill Univerity in Montreal, Canada talk to Prof. Luis Fernandez of Arizona State University and examine some local experiments in Canada. Because conventional police forces have been created to serve capitalist interests, community based policing show promise of serving communities much better until such time as societies can be thoroughly transformed.
Imagining a world without police, however, is daunting – without police, who would respond to emergencies? Who would we call when we see a crime being committed? Despite this, Fernandez doesn’t see a society without police to be that far off.
“Most of our communities already exist without policing. Most of our human interactions are already outside of the purview of police officers,” he said. “Most of the social relationships between people do not require police intervention,” he added.
While a complete abolition of the police system would require a change in social order, some alternatives to the current police system set out to empower people to keep their communities safe, while encouraging everyone to live lives that are free of violence and oppression. A society with little or no policing requires strong community organizations to mediate and react to conflict when it does occur.
