“A Kinder, Gentler War on the Poor”

1001 Books to Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 111
Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

Since the middle 1960s, America’s catchall solution for gangs, widespread homelessness, sex work, and drugs has been more police. But has this solution accomplished anything? It’s certainly created entire classes of people guaranteed to spend part of their lives in jail. But sending police into poor communities for mass drug sweeps, roundups of street hookers, and to rough up street hoodlums has arguably not made Americans any safer.

If you’re like me, you never heard of sociologist Alex S. Vitale until Senator Ted Cruz waved his most influential book around on the Senate floor. Professor Vitale’s principles have been widely known in activist circles for years, and motivated the Black Lives Matter movement. His precepts, however, require a level of nuance not easily distilled onto cardboard protest placards or 240-character tweets. Thus, his words have been widely misconstrued.

Periodically, America convulses with anger because police officers somewhere did something awful, usually to someone poor or Black. These outbreaks lead to incremental reforms, like mandatory body cameras or inherent bias training, and the energy for protest dissipates. Yet these reforms seldom result in better outcomes for the poor, marginalized communities where police presence is most prevalent. The problem recurs, but America’s motivation for reform has been diminished.

The problem, Vitale says, stems from a fundamental conflict between these reforms, and the police’s underlying mission. Our society trains and authorizes police to enforce order, not justice. The police fundamentally serve the economic system, not the citizens, and will protect the former at the expense of the latter. Humanizing the police won’t fix that; as Vitale writes, “A kinder, gentler, more diverse war on the poor is still a war on the poor.”

Vitale breaks this claim down into its most important components, and justifies his claims with evidence. Intensive police actions haven’t diminished America’s problems with drugs, homelessness, or sex work, because these problems aren’t motivated by mere criminality. They’re driven by economic factors, and will persist until economic destitution is eliminated. Police drive homeless people and hookers out of sight, but the need for money and shelter remains.

Alex S. Vitale

Worse, a willingness to delegate responsibility for economic inequality onto police and prisons, empowers organized crime. Not only have intense police crackdowns failed to eliminate gang activity, they’ve taught many poor Americans that only gangs provide them protection from intrusive police. The problem becomes circular: poor Americans need gang protection from police, while middle-class Americans need (or anyway want) police protection from gangs.

Every dollar spent on police crackdowns, Vitale writes, takes money away from social workers, mental health professionals, and other skilled workers charged with providing ways out. Yet that’s consistently America’s response to social unrest. From union organizers in the Gilded Age, to BLM protesters today, both major parties answer every demand for change by plowing more money into police and prisons. Funny enough, nothing ever gets much better.

America’s unwillingness to subsidize even rudimentary alternatives has costs for our poor. For many, the only reliable way to achieve mental health treatment, diversion from gangs or prostitution, or inpatient drug rehabilitation, is to first get arrested. O. Henry wrote, over a century ago, that hobos and other homeless could only find reliable winter shelter in prison. Arrestees, sadly, have lifelong criminal records that impede their job and housing prospects.

Professor Vitale addresses America’s most high-profile problems individually, though he acknowledges they’re often deeply entwined. He demonstrates how the popular rhetoric surrounding “crimes” like drug abuse and prostitution are driven by moralistic outrage, not measures of harm. Treating people who need pain control, or are willing to trade sex for money, as criminals, doesn’t fix the underlying problems; it just makes the problems less visible.

Every chapter ends with two sections: “Reforms” and “Alternatives.” In the Reforms section, Vitale breaks down what attempts America’s politicians have made to hold police more accountable. He credits those reforms where they’ve worked, but they haven’t always worked, certainly not reliably. The Alternatives section proposes ways governments have reallocated police responsibilities onto civilian groups, or could. Because fundamentally, this isn’t about fixing police, it’s about fixing culture.

Moving away from police-centered approaches to handling disorder will mean leaving the map, Vitale acknowledges. That’s scary even under ideal circumstances. But the existing map has proven unreliable, and has served to deepen rather than redress the inequalities that drive people to crime. Broken-windows policing has made life quieter, but not necessarily safer. It’s time to abandon America’s addiction to order, and try techniques that serve to broaden justice.