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Abstract
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From Minneapolis to Lagos, and from Rio de Janeiro to Nairobi, people are demanding fundamental change not only to the ways in which their communities are policed but more essentially to how complex social problems and challenges are responded to, and by whom.
The police killing of George Floyd in the United States on May 25 ignited mass calls for justice and for new approaches to addressing and promoting community safety and well-being. High-profile incidents of police violence and use of force have been noted in cities and countries on every continent, ushering forth new movements for police reform. These calls for change have varied in their specificity and focus but include demands for a rebalancing of investment in policing, including shifts away from punitive and militarized models of social control that have yielded an excess of police violence and incarceration. Existing models are widely recognized as reinforcing deep-rooted social, economic, and ethnic and racial inequalities. In many parts of the Global South, current models are deeply rooted in the history of colonization and the police structures, cultures, and legislation emerging from colonialism.
Meanwhile, the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic has generated a debate on what exactly constitutes community safety and well-being, what are the best ways to encourage compliance with collective needs and concerns and who should ensure and enforce this compliance. The disparities in many countries in funding and responses between the public health and public security sectors have been stark. Many in law enforcement have also questioned the appropriateness of being tasked with enforcing quarantine measures or other public health requirements and have deplored the lack of readily available alternatives.
These debates and challenges are far from new or surprising. For years, practitioners, researchers, and advocates have articulated ways in which community safety and health are mutually reinforcing and constitutive. Likewise, they have argued for new approaches to safety and health that can build effective and appropriate partnerships between police and public health and offer alternatives to a sole focus on punitive enforcement measures. They have also argued that many complex social problems are better understood as, and should be considered as, health issues rather than criminal matters. The role of policing in addressing complex social issues, the partnership of law enforcement with public health, and the meaning and value of "public health policing" are all being currently debated, and there is much evidence that many chronic social problems require new approaches. There have been positive developments in policing--and in the police and public health partnership approach--but these are relatively few. Indeed, there are often more examples of regression to failed strategies. Polarization increases as a consequence; there is urgent need for resolution of this polarization.
We have no illusion that these deep structural and historical problems can be solved quickly. However, it will surely be a failure if, a year on from the death of George Floyd and the subsequent uprisings in cities across the world, we are still talking simply about the problems we are facing and not about actually implementing practical measures to try to resolve them. That is where this current initiative of the Global Law Enforcement and Public Health Association (GLEPHA) comes in...
Language: en |