The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself Recent years have seen an explosion of protest and concern about police brutality and repression--especially after months of violent protest erupted in Ferguson, Missouri following the police killing of Mike Brown. Much of the conversation has focused on calls for enhancing police accountability, increasing police diversity, improving police training, and emphasizing community policing. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to produce results, because they fail to get at the core of the problem. The problem is policing itself--the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last 40 years. This book attempts to jog public discussion of policing by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and demonstrating how the expanded role of the police is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice--even public safety. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, Alex Vitale shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice. Reviews: “The End of Policing combines the best in academic research with rhetorical urgency to explain why the ordinary array of police reforms will be ineffective in reducing abusive policing. Alex Vitale shows that we must move beyond conceptualizing public safety as interdiction, exclusion, and arrest if we hope to achieve racial and economic justice.”
—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor, CUNY Graduate Center, Co-Founder of Critical Resistance, author of Golden Gulag “Deeply researched, but also vibrantly and accessibly written, The End of Policing is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the dire state of policing today. Alex Vitale shows compellingly that as long as we ask the police to shore up a fundamentally unequal and dysfunctional social order, superficial ‘reforms’ won’t do much to help. And he offers concrete alternatives aimed at restoring communities and getting police out of the business of trying to contain social problems that they cannot—and should not—control.”
—Elliott Currie, Professor, University of California, Irvine, author of Crime and Punishment in America “An extremely vital book on policing. Should be assigned at all police academies. If only the Philando Castile jurors had read this.”
—Jeffrey Fagan, Director of Columbia Law School's Center for Crime, Community, and Law “Challenging standard accounts of how to reform policing, Alex Vitale argues that true safety demands directing resources away from police and prisons and towards economic development, education, and drug treatment. Urgent, provocative, and timely, The End of Policing will make you question most of what you have been taught to believe about crime and how to solve it.”
—James Forman Jr., Professor, Yale Law School and author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America “In a tightly constructed monograph filled with reform suggestions, Vitale decries the evolution of police agencies as tools of the white establishment to suppress dissatisfaction among the have-nots. A clearly argued, sure-to-be-controversial book.”
—Kirkus “In a chapter on each issue, Vitale sets out the problem in depth, explores the liberal view of reforms that seek only to remove the worst excesses of police conduct and to restore the legitimacy of using force in the interests of society, and then offers ideas for alternatives.”
—The Network for Police Monitoring “Vitale’s amassing of trenchant facts into an enticing intellectual framework makes The End of Policing a must-read for anyone interesting in waging and winning the fight for economic and social justice.”
—Michael Hirsch, Indypendent “The End of Policing is that holiday argument book, the relatively brief stack of facts you can hand to a relative who still talks about those nice guys who helped out with the flat tire and doesn’t see why any lives have to matter more than they already do. A thorough rinsing of the American criminal justice system.”
—Sasha Frere-Jones, 4 Columns “The End of Policing’s great strength lies in demonstrating that if the shape of American policing is historical, it is also contingent. We could have made different choices regarding how we set about securing the public against the array of threats that confront it, and—refreshingly, at this moment of general despair—Vitale believes we still can.”
—Adam Greenfield, Los Angeles Review of Books “Offers a compelling digest of the dynamics of crime and law enforcement, and a polemic against the militarization of everything. Vitale calls for a dismantling of our very notion of the police: a sprawling, untethered bureaucracy permitted to use lethal force and unaccountable to the people.”
—E. Tammy Kim, Nation “Unfortunately, neither increased diversity in police forces nor body cameras nor better training make any seeming difference. We need to restructure our society and put resources into communities themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very persuasively.”
—Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers “A welcome challenge to reformist thinking and a powerful argument against social and economic injustice, inequality and racism.”
—London School of Economics Review of Books “Suggests a radical alternative that, on the one hand, abolishes corrupt and lethal police policies designed to contain the racialised poor and, on the other, develops and sustains safer communities.”
—Race & Class “A welcome challenge to reformist thinking and a powerful argument against social and economic injustice, inequality and racism.”
—LSE Review of Books “Offers a convincing argument that the traditional roles played by police forces have been largely counter-productive.”
—Morning Star “A compelling critique of modern policing.”
—Peter Stauber, Counterfire "Not only presents problems with policing but suggests alternatives that I had not previously considered."
—Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half “The End of Policing combines the best in academic research with rhetorical urgency to explain why the ordinary array of police reforms will be ineffective in reducing abusive policing. Alex Vitale shows that we must move beyond conceptualizing public safety as interdiction, exclusion, and arrest if we hope to achieve racial and economic justice.” - Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor, CUNY Graduate Center, Co-Founder of Critical Resistance, author of Golden Gulag About the Author: Alex S. Vitale is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College. Before joining academia he was on the staff of the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness. He is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics. He consults with both police departments and human rights organizations internationally, is Senior Policy Advisor to the Police Reform Organizing Project in New York City, and is on the New York State Advisory Committee of the US Commission on Civil Rights. He has written recent pieces in the New York Daily News, The Nation, and The New Republic. | 
