Hakuna Masala

One thing that turned me against the vision of prison/police abolition was realizing it would be this type of person who would be, in the main, taking their place as administrators of “community justice,” “accountability circles,” and so on. That, in fact, it would be a different flavor of cop, but ultimately would still attract people with many of the same pathologies common among police (desire for domination, power, authority, status; sadism; etc). The methods and culture would be different but, ultimately, still populated by people I simply do not trust with such responsibilities. Given this reality, finding ways to reform or remake the institutions of formal, bureaucratic justice—to empower the institutions and rules and disempower the arbitrary authority of the sort of individual drawn to such work—seemed like a better strategy than simply trading one kind of cop for another. I suppose this is the crux of it; some people see the bureaucracy and the institution as the problem. I don’t. I see the failure of bureaucracy to assert itself above the individual, arbitrary wills of People With Cop Brain as the problem. I want a justice system even more impersonal and rule-bound, one which properly restrains the antisocial and hostile impulses of the people who tend to, given the chance, volunteer for the work of regulating “the community.” The abolitionist vision is one without formal institutions and bureaucracies which can subdue these impulses and this kind of person drawn to the work of policing/regulating/controlling. Therefore, I don’t see it succeeding at much beyond trading one kind of police for another, less constrained, more arbitrary kind of police.