The Colonial Relationships Between Cop Cities, Social Control, and Ideologies of Justice

• In Event: Criminology, Colonialism, and Coloniality

Abstract

In April of 2021, The Atlanta Police Foundation, released renderings of its proposed Public Safety Training Center to be located outside of Atlanta, GA near the grounds of the former Atlanta Prison Farm. The Public Safety Training Center is commonly referred to as “Cop City” by activists opposing the expansion of policing and the destruction of 85 acres of forest to build the facility. The phenomenon and increase in militarized policing and training signals not only a backlash to the uprisings of summer 2020, but also the colonial relationship of policing as racialized control in the United States. The use of police to maintain social control in oppressed and disenfranchised communities signals the colonial status of police as an occupying force in vulnerable communities, particularly in the Southern United States. In this paper I focus on the colonial relationships of racialized control and the emergence of “Cop Cities” in the U.S. South. I argue that the rhetoric of crime control and safety support the objectives of increased militarization and social control that maintains white hegemony and patriarchal colonialist systems.

Author

• Sanna King, Mississippi State University