If police are the problem, what’s the solution?
Tens of millions of
people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with
them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the
delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery
vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police
transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over
occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a
compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued
and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete
strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step
toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete.
Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia,
Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented
with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher
details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without
the disorganizing interventions of cops: neighborhood response
networks, community-based restorative justice practices,
democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced
social services.
A World Without
Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an
unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around
the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in
which we keep us safe.