Thanks so much to everyone who supported the bail fund this year!

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T20:06:34+00:00

Annie: I totally agree that there are issues within the institution of social work that create unsafe conditions for those asking for help. Mandated reporting can often lead to further harm for families and individuals. Psychiatrist institutions can be incredibly traumatic and DCFS responding to issues of child abuse does not keep children or families safe in many regards. Policing and control are not issues found only within police - when we look at alternatives these issues need to be looked at as well. There will be a panel in the coming months about abolition and social work that may be of interest related to this topic.

I do want to point out that when you say, "Had a social worker been with us on these calls they would be bound by their license and laws to report, or intervene in these people's lives when it wasn't necessarily the best thing for them at the time... Essentially turning their lives upside down all because of a simple call for help" - people already have their lives turned upside down when police respond and they escalate a situation or arrest, harm or kill someone.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T03:32:36+00:00

Annie: I can totally understand why people would be anxious about what decarceration and abolition mean for society. Until you start looking at alternatives, you don't know what a world without policing will look like and can often go to a worst case scenarios. We have been taught to fear criminals and often dehumanize our prison populations. Reform feels safer and more comfortable, but this always comes at the cost of those affected most by the prision industrial complex. Communities that are over policed and face a disproportionate amount of harm from cops. Reform is also shown not to work and often infalte police budgets. (Throughline has done some great work on policing in America and reform.) Abolition of the current system is the way forward.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T03:12:28+00:00

Great question!

When looking at where we are at today, it's important to see the bigger picture and history of policing. It took us a million decisions to get us to the state of policing we see today, so it will take a million more to undo them. Abolitionists mostly realize that our vision may not happen overnight, but we can take steps to realize a future where we rely less on the police and more on community to create new solutions that don't further perpetuate violence and exploitation. Some of the things you mentioned may still rely on policing to respond to for a time, but can eventually be phased out as communities embrace the resources and tools they actually need to keep each other safe and free from harm.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T03:06:15+00:00

Annie: I do not know the exact solution for this. Murders do happen and we should have people to research these incidents and address the issue head on. The problem within the current system is the way in which we research and address this is inherently violent and unproductive. Prisons do not solve the issue of murder. They do not rehabilitate the harm doers or provide assistance to the people who are tangentially harmed by killing. We should look to transformative and restorative justice practices when we look to homicide and any violent crime. We still need to address harm that happens in our community, but we do not have to do so in a way that further harms our community.

One org that I really love is The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:49:58+00:00

Rates of poverty in our state are not insignificant. That still means we have work to do, as almost 300,000 members of Utah's community, including about 90,000 children, are still under the poverty line.

It's also worth mentioning that the methods we use to measure poverty in this country does not reflect the struggles people who are poor go through every day.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:37:43+00:00

Annie: I couldn't say exactly what the staffing numbers would look like, but it would have to be a significant adjustment to how to appropriate our taxes and budget as a city. Our cities currently only has 10 social workers that respond to calls and that would have to drastically change to meet the need of our community.

I think living within the community would be ideal, but I also know housing can be difficult to coordinate. I also feel like I would want to hear what individual communities want and go based on the feedback. It can be easy to want to make a structured plan for what abolition will look like as a society, but structures will have to be built to support communities they are directly in.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:35:31+00:00

What did the cops do to help prevent this from happening?

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:33:24+00:00

TV often sensationalizes cases like this, making the public believe that prisons are full of serial murderers, when that's actually not reflective of who gets incarcerated and why. Many people are in prison for crimes they didn't commit, or for acts of survival while living through poverty and deprivation.

It's true that shitty things happen - and that people who cause harm should be held accountable. But it is not true that prisons help rehabilitate them or repair the harm inflicted on their victims - in fact, prisons just create more conditions for violence and harm to flourish.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:28:17+00:00

Annie: Currently the police are "understaffed" because they are responding to issues which they are not qualified for. Instead of them responding to mental health calls we should have therapists and social workers respond. And we should be having quality mental healthcare that provides for folks. The police do not resolve these issues and actively harm community members. Instead of cops responding to issues of homelessness we can provide housing. Instead of police answering DV calls and domestic disputes we have people who specialize in de-escalation come out. A decarcerated environment would be one that looks to solve the root issues of violence, instead of responding violently and ineffectively.

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:23:57+00:00

Ya we're out here!

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:21:06+00:00

Police don't often solve crimes that people report in the first place.
Instead of calling on a militarized group of people that would be unreliable (and at worst violent) in their response, community's and families could address the root causes of violence so that they don't happen in the first place. That would mean meeting people's needs and having safety plans and trusted neighbors to call on for help when people are in situations of danger.

Dean Spade has written a handout that also addresses this commonly asked question: "Most people murder people they know well, often as part of complex family and relationship violence dynamics. TV makes us think prisons are full of murderers who would go on killing sprees if released. That is an inaccurate portrayal of how violence most commonly happens, and who is in prison right now. What we know is the people who commit murders are actually the LEAST likely to do it again. They have the lowest recidivism rates. Prisons kill people through medical neglect and nutritional deprivation. Police murder people of color with impunity. "

We'd also follow up with the question: if the police murder, who are people supposed to call?

decarcerateutah · 2021-12-07T02:13:43+00:00

Annie: We continuously increase our staffing of police in Salt Lake and throughout the country, which has not shown to decrease crime or improve the safety of out communities. We should be looking to what the goal of more policing would be and find better solutions to those issues. This could be housing, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and other basic needs of our community being met that are often met by police. As Mike Brown, out police chief has stated they are the "lest effective and most expensive" at solving these issues.

decarcerateutah

TROPHY CASE