Just Policing

Book excerpt: Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Though the injustices of our world seemingly require some kind of policing, the police are often sources of injustice themselves. But this is not always a result of intentionally or negligently bad policing. Sometimes it is an unavoidable result of the injustices that emerge from interactions with other social systems. This raises an important question of just policing: how should police respond to the injustices built into the system? Just Policing attempts an answer, offering a theory of just policing in non-ideal contexts. Jake Monaghan argues that police discretion is not only unavoidable, but in light of non-ideal circumstances, valuable. This conflicts with a widespread but inchoate view of just policing, the legalist view that finds justice in faithful enforcement of the criminal code. But the criminal code leaves policing seriously underdetermined; full enforcement is neither possible nor desirable. So, police need an alternative normative framework for evaluating and guiding their exercise of power. Just Policing draws on research in political philosophy and the social sciences to engage a number of current controversies, both scholarly and popular, regarding the police. It critiques popular approaches to police abolitionism while defending normative limits on police power. The book offers a defense of police discretion against common objections and evaluates controversial issues in order maintenance, such as the policing of "vice" and homelessness, democratic control over policing, community policing initiatives, police collaborations and alternatives like mental health response teams, and possibilities for structural reform.