Roundtable: Diminishing Police Power, Building Community Safety Infrastructure

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Sessions

Abstract/Description

In this session, participants will share lessons from projects that seek to diminish police power by: (a) reducing the opportunity for encounter and arrest; (b) narrowing the scope of policing responsibilities; (c) reallocating funding toward life-sustaining institutions; and/or (d) establishing community defense capacities to interrupt harm, address conflict, and provide redress. These varied projects are experiments - efforts “to build the future in the present” - by creating constellations of community-based infrastructure that can render police power obsolete.

Sub Unit

• Area XIV. Roundtables

Individual Presentations

• Restorative Justice, Care Work, and Community Safety - Grace Gamez, Equal Justice USA

• The Legal Violence of Police Calls for Service: Toward New Community Safety Infrastructure - Kyra Martinez, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Vivian Swayne, University of Tennessee

• Developing an Alternative Response Community of Practice - Tahir Duckett, Center for Innovations in Community Safety (Georgetown Law)

• Interrupting Arrest in a Bordertown - Meghan G. McDowell, Northern Arizona University