It is traditional, in a book such as this, to end with recommendations as to how the police can be made more efficient, more effective, less corrupt, less brutal, and so on. Those recommendations are almost always addressed to policy-makers and police administrators. Usually the recommendations are more technical than political, meaning that they offer detached advice on what, in the broadest sense, may be considered the means of policing - strategies of patrol, crowd control, interrogation techniques, use-of-force policies, organizational schemes, accountability mechanisms, morale boosters, affirmative action - while taking for granted (but rarely identifying) the ends of policing. They do not, usually, raise substantive questions about the police role in society, the need for police, or alternatives to policing.
I am going at things from quite the opposite angle. My recommendations are not addressed to those with power, but to the public. They are decidedly political, and avoid the technical. I have, throughout this book, scrutinized the police role, examined its implications for democracy and social justice, and questioned the ends the cops serve. I turn now to briefly consider whether we can do without police.
In his essay "The Manufacture of Consent," Noam Chomsky advises, "If you want to learn something about the propaganda system, have a close look at the critics and their tacit assumptions. These typically constitute the doctrines of the state religion [1]."
With this in mind, it is interesting to note the things that scholars will not admit, the possibilities that they leave unexamined. In the "serious" literature, it is a nearly universal assumption that the police are a necessary feature of modern society [2].
Rodney Stark writes, "It is vulgar nonsense to be anti-police. Our society could not exist without them [3]."
Carl Klockars echoes the point: "[N]o one whom it would be safe to have home to dinner argues that modern society could be without police.... [4]"
Dozens of similar quotations are available for anyone who wishes to find them. Yet in one sense these particular remarks are unusual. I present them here because they come from authors whose critical insights have been invaluable to my work on this book, and because they clearly state what others quietly take as given. Most authors do not even bother to assert that the police are necessary, much less argue the point. They feel no requirement to identify social needs that the police meet, because the role of the police, as they see it. is simply beyond dispute. It is outside the boundaries of debate. It is unquestionable; the alternative, unthinkable. In this context, the defensive comments of Stark and Klockars read less like arguments in favor of police and more like evasive maneuvers against the accusation that the authors might somehow oppose the cops. Their statements serve as a kind of loyalty oath, a promise to remain within the borders of acceptable opinion.
But the assumption that the police represent a social inevitability ignores the rules of logic: if we accept that police forces arose at a particular point in history, to address specific social conditions, then it follows that social change could also eliminate the institution. The first half of this syllogism is readily admitted, the second half is heresy. Almost no scholarly work takes the possibility seriously [5].
It is a bad habit of mind, a form of power-worship, to assume that things must be as they are, that they will continue to be as they have been [6]. It soothes the conscience of the privileged, dulls the will of the oppressed. The first step toward change is the understanding that things can be different. This is my principal recommendation, then: we must recognize the possibility of a world without police.
There is a question that haunts every critic of police - namely, the question of crime, and what to do about it. This is a real concern, and it deserves to be taken seriously. The fact is, the police do provide an important community service - offering protection against crime. They do not do this job well, or fairly, and it is not their chief function, but they do it, and this brings them legitimacy [7]. Even people who dislike and fear them often feel that they need the cops. Maybe we can do without omnipresent surveillance, racial profiling, and institutionalized violence, but most people have been willing to accept these features of policing, if somewhat grudgingly, because they have been packaged together with things we cannot do without - crime control, security, and public safety. It is not enough, then, to relate to police power only in term s of repression; we must also remember the promise of protection, since this legitimates the institution.
Because the state uses this protective function to justify its own violence, the replacement of the police institution is not only a goal of social change, but also a means of achieving it. The challenge is to create another system that can protect us from crime, and can do so better, more justly, with a respect for human rights, and with a minimum of bullying. What is needed, in short, is a shift in the responsibility for public safety - away from the state and toward the community.
In the earlier discussion of community policing, I argued that community policing constituted, in part, an effort to co-opt community resources and put them in the service of police objectives [8]. I did not, at the time, dwell on the reasons underlying this, but the attempt at co-optation points to a fact that ought not be overlooked: community is a source of power.
Community is not simply the territory within which crime is to be controlled, it is itself a means of government: its detailed knowledge about itself and the activities of its inhabitants are to be utilized, its ties, bonds, forces and affiliations are to be celebrated, its centres of authority and methods of dispute resolution are to be encouraged, nurtured, shaped and instrumentalized to enhance the security of each and all [9].
Where possible, the state seeks to draw on this power and direct it to its own ends. Community policing is one such attempt. In exchange for protection, the police negotiate for access to this power network, insinuate themselves deeply within it, and try to shape its activities to suit their interests.
One major difficulty facing the state in its efforts to harness community power is the fact that this power is generally underdeveloped.
Community is defined by two characteristics: first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another.... and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms, and meanings, and a shared history and identity - in short, to a particular culture [10].
Such webs of affinity are often painfully lacking from modern urban life [11] - and where they exist, they do not generally come in easily manageable bureaucratic packages awaiting official "partnerships" with police. In fact, there is inherent tension between the idea of police and the ideals of community.
The modern police are, in a sense, a sign that community norms and controls are unable to manage relations within or between communities, or that communities themselves have become offensive to society. The bottom line of these observations is that genuine communities are probably very rare in modern cities, and, where they do exist, have little interest in cultivating relationships of any kind with police [12].
Where genuine communities exist, they are sometimes even hostile to the police. In such cases, the authorities view community power not as an additional source of legitimacy, information, and infrastructural development, but as a rival that must be suppressed. The state has no choice but to interfere with the means of community action when the community falls into "enemy" hands-that is, when it resists state control or makes demands beyond those the state is willing to accept. This rule holds whether the enemy is described in political or criminal terms. The rationale is the same whether the authorities are interfering with grassroots political organizing, or whether they're disrupting neighborhood life in the name of "gang suppression [13]." The danger in these cases is not the lack of community, but the existence of a community that the state does not control. The police response is the domestic equivalent of destroying a village in order to save it.
In brief, the state seeks to mobilize community power in support of government goals, or else to suppress the sources of power opposed to its goals. Either way, the state recognizes the potential for community power, its promise and its threat.
This carrot-and-stick attitude may be unsettling, but the underlying analysis suggests some hopeful possibilities: if the community is a source of power, then it could exercise this power for its own ends. rather than those of the state. If, as community policing advocates argue, community involvement is the key to controlling crime, then this suggests that communities could develop public safety systems that do not rely on the state. The state's efforts to maintain legitimacy thus, ironically, point the way to its destruction.
Both state-sponsored and citizen-initiated attempts at community crime prevention are based on the recognition, however unsystematized, that formal, bureaucratic responses to crime which are both temporally and spatially removed from the commission of crime can never approach the efficacy of more informal, more immediate forms of community social control. Equally recognized by the state officials is that citizen-initiated and citizen-controlled forms of justice threaten the legal basis of the state itself. The essence of formal state law - the foundation of state society - is that removal from individuals and communities of their rights to directly define what constitutes correct behavior within that community and to take direct action against incorrect behavior. The substitution of state justice for popular justice is generally argued as the only viable alternative to mob rule and vigilantism. Counterposing state justice to vigilante justice, however, is a false dichotomy which obscures a third alternative. The alternative is organized, community forms of popular justice operated and controlled by private citizens, not by employees of the state [14].
The thought that such community-based measures could ultimately replace the police is intriguing. But if it is to be anything more than a theoretical abstraction or a utopian dream, it must be informed by the actual experiences of struggle.
Luckily, history does not leave us without guidance. The obvious place to look for community defense models is in places where distrust of the police, and active resistance to police power, has been most acute. There is a close connection between resistance to police power and the need to develop alternative means of securing public safety.
In the United States, the police have faced resistance mainly from two sources - workers and people of color (especially African Americans). This is unsurprising, given the class-control and racist functions that cops have fulfilled since their beginning. The job of controlling poor people and people of color has brought the cops into continual conflict with these parts of society. It has bred resistance, sometimes in the form of outright combat-riots, shoot-outs, sniper attacks. At other times, resistance has led to political efforts to curtail police power, or direct attempts to replace policing with other means of preserving order.
The role of the police in breaking strikes did not escape the attention of the workers on the picketline [15]. In the early twentieth century, labor unions worked strenuously to oppose the creation of the state police and to dissolve them where they existed. These efforts led, for a time, to restrictions on the use of state cops against strikers - but this victory has been practically forgotten today [16]. More significant, for the purposes of this discussion, are the unions' efforts to keep order when class warfare displaced the usual authorities.
The classic example is the Seattle General Strike of 1919. Coming to the aid of a shipbuilders' strike, 110 union locals declared a citywide sympathy strike and 100,000 workers participated. Almost at once the city's economy halted, and the strike committee found itself holding more power than the local government. The strike faced three major challenges: starvation, state repression, and the squeamishness of union leaders. Against the first, the strikers themselves set about insuring that the basic needs of the population were met, issuing passes for trucks carrying food and other necessities, setting up public cafeterias, and licensing the operation of hospitals, garbage collectors, and other essential services [17]. Recognizing that conditions could quickly degenerate into panic, and not wanting to rely on the police, they also organized to ensure the public safety. The "Labor War Veteran's Guard" was created to keep the peace and discourage disorder. Its instructions were written on a blackboard at its headquarters:
The purpose of this organization is to preserve law and order without the use of force. No volunteer will have any police power or be allowed to carry weapons of any sort, but to use persuasion only [18].
In the end, the Seattle General Strike was defeated, caught between the threat of military intervention and the fading support of the AFL's international officers [19]. While the strike did not end in victory, it did demonstrate the possibility of working-class power - the power to shut down the city, and also the power to run it for the benefit of the people rather than for company profit.
The strike was broken, but it did not collapse into chaos. Mayor Ole Hanson noted, while denouncing the strike as "an attempted revolution," that "there was no violence ... there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings [20]." Indeed, there was not a single arrest related to the strike (though later, there were raids), and other arrests decreased by half [21]. Major General John Morrison, in charge of the federal troops, marveled at the orderliness of the city [22].
Almost fifty years later, more sustained efforts at community defense grew out of the civil rights movement. As the militancy of the movement increased and its perspective shifted toward that of Black Power, African Americans prepared to defend themselves - first against Klansmen and cops, later against crime in the ghetto. As early as 1957, Robert Williams armed the NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, and successfully repelled attacks from the Ku Klux Klan and the police [23]. Soon other self-defense groups appeared in Black communities throughout the South. The largest of these was the Deacons for Defense and Justice, which claimed more than fifty chapters in the Southern states. The Deacons made it their mission to protect civil rights workers and the Black community more generally. Armed with shotguns and rifles, they escorted civil rights workers through dangerous back country areas, and organized twenty-four-hour patrols when racists were harassing Black people in Bogalusa, Louisiana. They also eavesdropped on police radio calls and responded to the scene of arrests to discourage the cops from overstepping their bounds [24].
Williams and the Deacons influenced what became the most developed community defense program of the period - the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The Panthers, most famously, "patrolled pigs [25]." Visibly carrying guns, they followed police through the Black ghetto with the explicit aim of preventing police brutality and informing citizens of their rights [26]. When police misbehaved, their names and photographs appeared in the Black Panther newspaper [27].
The Panthers also sought to meet the community's needs in other ways providing medical care, giving away shoes and clothing, feeding school children breakfast, setting up housing cooperatives, transporting the families of prisoners for visitation days, and offering classes during the summer at "Liberation Schools." These "survival programs" sought to meet needs that the state and the capitalist economy were neglecting, at the same time aligning the community with the Party and drawing both into opposition with the existing power structure [28].
The strategy was applied in the area of public safety as well. The Panthers' opposition to the legal system is well known: they patrolled and sometimes fought the police, they taught people about their legal rights, and they provided bail money and arranged for legal defense when they could. But the Panthers also took seriously the threat of crime, and sought to address the fears of the community they served. With this in mind, they organized Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE), an escort and bussing service in which young Black people escorted the elderly on their business around the city [29].
At the same time, the Panthers sought reforms to democratize and decentralize the existing police. In Berkley, they proposed a 1971 ballot initiative: to divide the city into three police districts - one for the predominantly Black area, one for the campus area, and one for the affluent Berkeley Hills. Each district would elect a board to oversee policing in their area, and the officers themselves would be required to live in the neighborhoods they patrolled [30]. The campaign marked a straightforward attempt to establish community control over a major source of state power, the police. Writing in the Nation, Jerome Skolnick acknowledged the strength of this approach. He predicted: "In all probability, the proposal will lose.... But whether it wins or loses, it will have an effect. It will demand that its critics come up with something better, and it will probably promote change, if not this year, or precisely this way [31]." The measure failed at the ballot, but it succeeded in demonstrating sizable opposition to the current state of policing. Over all, one-third of Berkeley voters voted for the proposal; in the campus area, two-thirds voted in favor [32]. Even in defeat, the plan represented a challenge to the status quo.
Meanwhile, the Black Panther Party enjoyed massive support around the country. According to a 1970 Harris poll of African Americans, 43 percent of those interviewed said that the Black Panther Party represented their views; 66 percent said the Panthers' activities gave them a sense of pride; 86 percent stated that even if they disagreed with the Party's views, Black people had to stand together and defend themselves; and half said they felt that sympathy for the Party was growing [33]. The Panthers' support was grounded in the Black community, but it was not limited to the Black population. Other ethnic groups noted the Panthers' successes and began organizing along similar lines, creating groups like the Young Lords, the Brown Berets, and the Patriot Party [34]. To radicals of the time, the Panthers represented the vanguard of a revolution; to FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover, they were "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country [35]," and accordingly they faced what is probably the most intensive political repression in American history [36].
These cases are instructive, perhaps as much for their limitations as for the positive example they offer. In each historical instance, the initiative taken to defend the community was extraordinary, and the relationship between collective self-defense and conflict with the state was clear. But the efforts were abridged, cut short by external pressures and internal tensions. The 1919 Seattle Strike, however well it may prefigure a society where the workers are in control, was never intended as a revolution [37]. The provisions the unions offered were necessary, and remarkable, but they were only seen as short-term measures. The presumption, always, was that when the strike was won, the city would return to normal. The Panthers had more ambitious aims, but their revolution was attacked from without and disrupted from within.
More developed models arise, predictably, where revolutionary movements are more advanced, more successful, and stronger. For examples, we must look beyond our own borders, and turn our attention to the struggles of colonized people in South Africa and Northern Ireland [38].
No one said that revolution would be easy. Writing his influential how-to for repression regimes, counter-insurgency expert Frank Kitson explained that
the leaders of a subversive movement have two separate but closely related jobs to do: they must gain the support of a proportion of the population, and they must impose their will on the government either by military defeat or by unendurable harassment [39].
What Kitson failed to note are the burdens that accompany success in these endeavors. As a revolutionary movement gains the support of the population, it acquires, intentionally or not, responsibilities that it must meet to maintain this support. Increasingly the population will turn to the revolutionary movement - and not the government - to meet its needs. And to the degree that the harassment campaign is successful, the authorities will be likely to abdicate their responsibilities, adding to the legitimacy of the revolutionaries, but also obliging them to meet additional demands. If the movement can do so, while withstanding whatever repressive measures are directed against it, it may be able to transfer power to itself and away from the state.
This is essentially what happened in South Africa. The apartheid government was never particularly concerned with meeting the needs of the population, so the anti-apartheid civic organizations took on many welfare functions, including services related to banking, childcare, insurance, healthcare, and assistance to the elderly and unemployed [40]. Meanwhile, the African National Congress (ANC) engaged in a campaign to, in the words of Nelson Mandela, "make government impossible [41]." This strategy had clear implications for crime control. The South African police were famously indifferent to crime in the Black townships, and the Black population was none too eager to cooperate with the cops [42]. This created a vacuum in the area of conflict resolution and public safety, and local communities painstakingly evolved institutions to fill it.
In the 1970s, townships established community courts modeled on traditional chieftain structures. These makgotla were patriarchal and conservative - dominated by older men, upholding traditional hierarchies of gender and age, and participating in the local government. Slowly, over the course of two decades, the makgotla were replaced by "People's Courts" - and later, "Street Committees" connected to the growing resistance movement. As these forms spread, younger people gained a more prominent place, as did - eventually - women [43].
These new committees were elected in public meetings and made responsible for preserving order and resolving disputes in their areas [44]. Though sometimes relying on physical punishment, often at a brutal extreme [45], the Street Committees tended to emphasize restorative justice rather than retributive justice. Hence they focused less on punishment than on healing, on putting things right and preserving the community [46].
Under apartheid, the police estimated there were 400 Street Committees operating throughout the country [47]. In many places, the organizations have survived into the post-apartheid era. According to a 1998 survey of Guguletu, Cape Town, 95 percent of respondents reported that there was a Street Committee on their street, 58 percent said they attended the Street Committee's meetings, and 69 percent thought that the committee did a good job. When asked, "Where do you go for help if a young man in your family does not obey his parents?" 41 percent said that they would go to to the Street Committee. When asked where they would go if the neighbors played their music too loud, 69 percent said they would take the complaint to the Street Committee. About two-thirds (66 percent) said they would go to the Street Committee "If a boy in the strpet stole a radio from your house... [48]" In addition to minor criminal cases, neighborhood disputes, and family troubles, Street Committees also handle grievances against employers, merchants, and creditors [49]. Though violence is still sometimes used, most cases are settled peacefully. Many Street Committees no longer employ corporal punishment at all, relying instead on public shaming, financial restitution, community service, or, at the most severe, banishment from the area [50].
The persistence of the Street Committees indicates something of the tensions between the aims of the anti-apartheid movement and the means it employed. The ANC sought to avail itself of popular direct action and to establish a new state. It achieved both, and is left trying to reconcile the two. Since 1994, the new government has been willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Street Committees, but in exchange it has insisted that they cooperate with the police [51]. At the same time, the police often refuse to become involved with minor disputes, referring them instead to the Street Committees; cops have even been known to allow extra-legal violence to persist without interference [52]. Of course, the need for such violence is different in the new political context: in the post-apartheid era, vigilantism is more a response to the state's inefficiency than to its oppressive nature - that is, it is a reaction to the state's weakness rather than to its overbearing might [53]. But the Street Committees may themselves help keep the government weak. Localized, democratic systems of justice undermine the state's monopoly on force and challenge its authority to define lawful behavior and good order.
Through the experience of popular justice, communities in South Africa are able to define what type of "legality" they want in their residential area. Moreover, a community is able to define how it wants to solve conflicts within its geographic boundaries. Communities, through their elected representatives, have developed their own notion of justice which differs from that of the state. In many circumstances, the community notion of justice epitomizes values of equality and social responsibility which are either not recognized or denied by the state [54].
In Northern Ireland, the search for popular justice has followed a similar path as in South Africa, and it continues to move in quite promising directions. There, too, the insurgents have sought out popular support while subjecting the authorities to unrelenting harassment; and the authorities have again responded with a mix of repression and neglect.
In 1969, after Loyalist attacks on Catholic neighborhoods, Republican residents formed Citizen Defense Committees for their own protection. These committees built and supervised barricades and maintained continuous foot patrols [55]. As a consequence, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) simply gave up policing militant areas of West Belfast and Derry.
With extraordinary levels of unemployment and poverty - and without state intervention - these "no-go" areas became extremely vulnerable to crime. So Catholics elected Community Councils responsible for welfare and justice in their neighborhoods and created "People's Courts" to hear minor cases. Petty criminal matters and neighborhood disputes were usually resolved through restitution or community service, but serious offenses were referred to the Irish Republican Army (the IRA).
When the People's Courts broke down after a couple of years, the IRA had little choice but to take over their crime control efforts [56]. This role fell to the paramilitaries for several reasons. First, it was widely felt that the IRA had already established its responsibility for protecting the community, and many residents were demanding that something be done about crime. Second, crime posed a security risk, since the police were liable to use petty criminals as informers [57]. And third, crime had a destabilizing and corrosive effect on the very communities the Republican forces depended on for support.
Unwilling to cede ground to Republican forces, the RUC has since sought to reassert its authority in these areas, but its efforts have not been terribly successful. Security concerns made it difficult to police Catholic areas. The police were slow in their response to calls, and they often brought soldiers with them when they arrived. Worse, the cops tried to recruit crime victims as informants; those unwilling to serve as snitches publicly exposed and vocally denounced these clumsy efforts. All this occurred in a context of continual human rights abuses, and only increased the Catholic distrust of the authorities. In many areas, residents became entirely unwilling to cooperate with the police, refusing even to report crimes [58].
But the IRA has not had an easy time of it, either. The IRA is not a police force. It had few resources to devote to investigations or corrections, little time (or patience) for due process considerations and human rights concerns. Hence, the IRA response to crime usually took the form of threats, beatings, property destruction, knee-cappings, expulsions, shootings, and executions [59]. This was typically unpleasant for all concerned. The accused had practically no chance of presenting a defense and faced punishment out of proportion to the crime. Innocent people were punished, sometimes killed [60]. IRA volunteers, meanwhile, were burdened with the job of beating up petty crooks when they wanted to be making things difficult for the British [61]. And worst of all, from a revolutionary standpoint, the friction created by this situation threatened to isolate the revolutionaries from their constituency [62].
One Republican activist explained the dilemma:
[T]he conflict has created a cycle of dependency, where the community expects the [Republican] movement to deal with anti-social crime, the IRA feels responsible and must act but lacks the resources to deal with it other than through violence and the result is damaging the kids who are after all part of the community [63].
This dependency worked two ways: the IRA depended on the Catholic community for protection, discretion, and support; the community relied on the IRA to protect it from crime, the state, and the Loyalists [64]. The difficulty arose when protecting the community from crime undercut the community's support for the paramilitaries.
To resolve the dilemma, Republican activists have sought a means to "disengage responsibly [65]," ideally by empowering the community to address anti-social behavior directly, without relying on either the IRA or the police. Republican activists approached a group of academics - criminologists and conflict resolution experts - and asked them to design a system that did not rely so much on breaking people's legs. The scholars obliged, publishing their recommendations in a Blue Book. The authors of the Blue Book, in extensive consultation with the local communities, set out to design a restorative justice system that met the following criteria: community involvement and support; nonviolence and operating within the law; proportionality of the sanctions to the offense; due process and a guarantee of human rights; consistency; engagement in the community; contact with community programs; and, adequate resources [66].
With the endorsement of Sinn Fein, Community Restorative Justice (CRJ) programs based on the Blue Book have been implemented on a trial basis [67]. In 1999, four pilot projects were established in Republican areas of Belfast and Derry [68]. The IRA pledged its support for the process, ending punishment beatings and referring cases to the CRJ [69]. In the first year, the new programs handled 200 cases, clearing 90 percent of them. By the end of 2001, 1,200 cases had been processed through the program, including complaints about noise, family conflicts, burglaries, property damage, and chronic offenders. Between 15 percent and 20 percent of these cases would previously have been handled with violence [70]. Since 1999, the CRJ programs have been quickly reproduced throughout Northern Ireland [71].
As recommended by the Blue Book, the Community Restorative Justice programs use mediation and family group counseling, monitor the agreements they negotiate, and employ charters outlining the rights and responsibilities of community members. Also recommended in the Blue Book, but not implemented by the pilot programs, were the use of professional investigators, community hearings, and boycotts of persistent offenders [72]. Tellingly, the RUC opposes the program, leading one IRA spokesman to quip, "the opposition of the RUC to the programme is the finest recommendation it could receive [73]."
Obviously, none of the models described in this chapter are perfect, but they do suggest the possibility of crime control without police, and perhaps even without the state [74]. Unfortunately, they don't follow this idea through to its most radical conclusion. Neither the ANC nor the IRA sought to do away with policing, or to replace the state with another system of social organization. They sought (or seek) not the elimination of the state, but the creation of new states. So when the ANC won the 1994 elections, it did not attempt to dismantle the state's police apparatus, but instead tried to incorporate the Street Committees into it And, despite Sinn Fein's continued refusal to cooperate with the existing police, it has made it perfectly clear that restorative justice is not intended to replace state policing [75]. Likewise, the Blue Book states: "It was never an objective of this process to supplant the official criminal justice system [76]."
But, whether or not the organizations responsible recognize the full implications of these crime-control activities, the possibilities they suggest are extraordinary. What's clear is that in neither case were the people dependent upon the state to protect them - quite the opposite! Such efforts thus present the opportunity to shift power away from the state. Based on his observations in Natal, South Africa, Daniel Nina concludes "that there could be peace when the formal sovereign is not in control ... [but] only if the structures of popular participation are running democratically and are accountable to the immediate community in which they operate [77]."
If we accept community control as a desirable end, and take seriously the possibility that it could be achieved without police, that leaves us with the hard work of finding an alternative system suitable to a diverse and disjointed society like that of the United StateS [78]. This is not the place to detail anything like a full model, but it is worth mentioning some of the features a viable proposal must include.
No universal model of popular justice is currently available. Despite their similarities, the differences between Street Committees and Community Restorative Justice are quite important. Rebekah Lee and Jeremy Seekings, who studied the Street Committees, are skeptical of Blue Book-type efforts to remove violence from the process. They write:
It is tempting to try to distinguish between a non-violent and restitutive form of popular justice, rooted in and accountable to the "community," and a violent and punitive form of popular justice executed by irresponsible and "lawless" individuals. "Community courts" (organized, responsible, restrained) are often contrasted with "vigilantism," (spontaneous, reckless and brutal), and it is claimed that strengthening "community courts" will lead to less "vigilantism." There is some truth in this. But the reality is not neat and tidy. Many communities will sanction the use of violence in a wide range of conditions, sometimes to an extent that seems excessive to observers....
In a township like Guguletu most forms of vigilantism do not entail actual physical violence: disputes within families or between neighbors or even between people on different streets are settled through compensation or undertakings to change one's behavior. But behind these settlements lies the threat of ostracism or of violence, and violence is widely used against rebellious juveniles. Vigilantism is implicit in even the most peaceful forms of community court.... In other words, there seems to be a tacit acceptance of violent forms of vigilantism if it is initiated by or has the consent of street committees or other legitimate local institutions [79].
Likewise, the Blue Book authors are critical of the South African model:
[W]e are not sure that any form of "direct democracy" such as specially elected street and neighborhood committees would be workable. While this is the pattern in some South African models and has been tried in Belfast ... we believe it would be hard to implement it in today's modern, differentiated communities [80].
They go on to specifically criticize the reliance on violence:
After considerable discussion, it was agreed that the presence of violence as a sanction in a community justice system had a considerably de-legitimizing effect.... This was despite the tact that several of the community justice systems examined (notably South Africa) had included the use of violent sanctions as punishment for offending [81].
Tnis disagreement points to a more fundamental concern, one that will largely determine the success or failure of any democratic or community-based system - namely, that of legitimacy. More important than the questions of "law" or "violence" is the competition between the state and the revolutionaries to acquire and maintain political support. Lee and Seekings note the popular support for some types of violence, and specifically explain that its acceptability depends on the legitimacy of the institutions authorizing it The Blue Book authors, likewise, do not denounce violence per se (remember, they hope someday to cooperate with the police), but they strongly recommend against its use in the contemporary context of Northern Ireland because it is likely to de-legitimize the restorative justice efforts. This strikes me as politically wise: given the history of the conflict, the earlier involvement of the IRA in crime control, the widespread distrust of the RUC, and the continued tensions in the region (cease-fire or no), it seems highly probable that any officially sanctioned violence will be viewed in partisan terms and undercut the CRJ's efforts. In both these cases, there is a close correlation between public interpretations of violence and political legitimacy.
The Blue Book suggests these indicators of legitimacy: due process, nonviolence, the reintegration of offenders back into the community, proportionality between offenses and sanctions, the community-spirited motivation of participants, and effectiveness [82]. Structurally, it recommends the program be connected to other community efforts, be located in identifiable neighborhoods of manageable size, coordinate operations between neighborhoods, represent the diversity of the community, and include former combatants and prisoners [83]. It also advises that volunteers be extensively trained in the principles of restorative justice, nonviolence, human rights, and the like [84].
Harry Mika and Kieran McEvoy identity seven elements necessary for legitimacy:
Mandate is the broadly-based license for program development which is secured through basic research (audit) in areas to ascertain needs and resources....
Moral authority [is] the bas[i]s upon which the community acquiesces power and authority to representative members....
Partnership is the sense of restorative initiatives emanating from the community, empowering and building capacity in the community, parlaying local resources to the ends of antisocial crime control and prevention in the community, addressing needs of community members who are victims and offenders, and working constructively with other community groups, associations, and organizations....
Competence involves the purposive and long term development of appropriate skill sets among individuals and organizations in conflict resolution including training materials and courses.... Generally, competence involves program performance at a level sufficient to satisfy key program objectives (addressing needs of victims and offenders, community safety, crime prevention, and the like), thereby both demonstrating and affirming community capacity to respond to antisocial behavior and find justice for its members.
Practice includes establishment of standards for justice processes, protection of participants, and responsiveness to the community....
Transparency involves mechanisms for public scrutiny, local management and control, and opportunities for public input....
Finally, accountability refers to ongoing program monitoring and evaluation, to ascertain compliance with published standards, as well as program impact and effectiveness [85].
It is no accident that many of the listed criteria represent practical limitations on the organization's power, and especially, on the possibility for abuses of that power [86]. There are dangers to popular justice that cannot be ignored. The Blue Book identifies the major weaknesses of the earlier Republican arrangement inconsistency, a lack of training, few resources, a paramilitary character, the absence of accountability, the removal of the community from the process, and the reliance on the IRA [87]. There is also the danger that informal systems could be used to settle personal grudges, attack political rivals, or give expression to the community's prejudices [88]. The chief hazard, as one Irish feminist organization worried, is the "danger of groups being mirror-images of the forces they are combating in terms of tactics and attitudes, even if their objectives remain revolutionary [89]."
These dangers provide clear guidance for those who wish to fight oppression. Underlying the search for justice is a simple principle: revolutionary institutions cannot be immune to the demands we place on existing institutions demands for democracy, accountability, transparency, and most of all, real community control.
Modest demands can be the seeds of major upheaval.
The demands for human rights. for community control, for an end to harassment and brutality - the basic requirements of justice - ultimately pit us against the ideology, structure, interests, and ambitions of the police. The modern police institution is at its base racist, elitist, undemocratic, authoritarian, and violent. These are the institution's major features, and it did not acquire them by mistake.
The order that the police preserve is the order of the state, the order of capitalism, the order of White supremacy. These are the forces that require police protection. These are the forces that created the police, that support them, sustain them, and guide them. These are the ends the police serve. They are among the most powerful influences in American society, and some of the most deeply rooted.
In this sense, our society cannot exist without police. But this needn't be the end of the story. A different society is possible.