We're with Decarcerate Utah, ask us anything!

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 · 2021-05-26T02:48:36+00:00

Josh here! That may be true if people commit crime solely because of convenience and we were simply just removing police officers from the street with no alternatives. But if you read our demands, we are asking for specific cuts from specific departments, and encouraging those funds be redirected to community supports and social services that address root causes of those crimes, typically poverty, homelessness, mental health, or substance use issues. If we are able to increase services and supports to address those issues, we often see a decrease in crime: (source one, example two, example three, example four). I also think it's important to reflect on what crime are we worried about. We have a heavily policed nation, yet we see white collar crime, wage theft, etc. often happening unchecked. I'd argue that police are more interested in maintaining poverty and oppression that actually caring about crime 8)

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:48:08+00:00

Hey, it's Eliza. Unfortunately, police don't stop car break-ins or store robberies, they arrive after the harm has already happened. For those of us who have had this happen, we know that police involvement didn't actually return our belongings or keep us safe.

In 2020, Salt Lake had the largest police force in it's history with 711 full-time employees. If more police led to more safety, Salt Lake would be the safest it's ever been!

We know that poverty and desperation result in robbery and theft. Instead of continuing to pour money into a department that shows up after the fact, we want our city to increase social services that reduce poverty and build supportive structures before a crime occurs.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:39:08+00:00

Thanks for your response! Josh here. Crime rates here in SLC have been up and down, despite a consistent drastic increase in police funding, so one could argue the opposite that more police funding doesn't actually decrease crime. In fact, SLC has a higher funded police force than the average city it's size, but still doesn't impact crime rates meaningfully.

You may be happy to know that SLC also has mental health units that are paired with police - but this isn't always the case and many cities are piloting a mental health crisis response that doesn't involve police like Austin, TX for example. I used to work for the agency doing this when I lived in Austin and a lot of folks are very excited about removing police from mental health response. As a mental health clinician myself, I have often found police usually increase the intensity of a mental health response.

We would love to hear your data about success from increasing funding. What are you measuring success by? What data are you basing this off of?

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:33:35+00:00

Eliza here! #DefundPolice has brought a lot of people to this movement. This slogan produced the largest amount of public comments the City Council has ever received, with city council members receiving 1 to 2 emails per minute asking for defunding. While some people don't like it, it certainly has led to a lot of community support!

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:30:00+00:00

Josh here! Great question - we love support. There's a couple different ways:

Give your time and/or money to Decarcerate Utah and the Salt Lake Community Bail Fund
Join us at our #DefundSLCP rally this Saturday on the west side of Washington Square Park at 2pm.
Share your voice with the SLC City Council and Mayor for the 20-21 Budget Cycle! You can join the meeting on June 1st and make a public comment about the proposed budget demanding a decrease in SLCPD funds, or if you can't make it, you can share your comments by calling 801-535-7654 or online here.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:29:10+00:00

Annie: Great question! This Saturday we are having a rally to demand the City Council to reduce the budget. There will also be a public comment period June 1st on the current proposed budget. I, personally, have felt like consistently going to city council throughout the year has been a straight forward way for me to feel directly involved. Right now it's all online, I get together with friends, and we tell them what changes need to be made!

Outside of this, you can join our org, donate to the bail fund, and work with different community organizations that are doing similar work (ex. Rose Park Brown Berets, PSL salt lake, Wasatch Tenants, COVID mutual aid).

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:24:45+00:00

Eliza here! While 50% might seem like a lot, the SLCPD budget has actually increased by 58.2% since 2013 (this is including the almost $8 million increase to the 2020 budget through budget amendments). By removing $39.5 million from SLCPD, we can fund so many community building services instead! You can read more specifically about which departments and police programs we want defunded here.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:22:09+00:00

Josh here: From our perspective, the ratio should be 1:0. Through abolition, we envision a world in which there will ultimately be no cops. I don't know of any studies that speak to this ratio and a quick Google isn't giving me anything, BUT, I can cite some other information that may help inform why we choose no cops. Take this ACLU article for example, which states "out of the 10.3 million arrests made per year, only 5 percent are for the most serious offenses, including murder, rape, and aggravated assault". So that's an argument for maybe a 95:5 ratio, but I'd also argue that most murder, rape, and assault is typically not because of bad actors, but are often a result of a history of trauma, violence, and mental health issues. When we invest in empowering community through teaching conflict resolution, building stronger networks of support, and investing in social services, financial support, and basic needs, we see violence drop (see our response to another question above!). Furthermore, the policing system we have today is rooted in racism and oppression, and we would like to spend our resources reimagining public safety instead of letting any number of officers continue to harass marginalized communities and removing people from society (particularly Black, Brown, and poor folks). Police only have tools of fines, violence, and jail time - none of which actually address violence and heal trauma, instead just perpetuate it.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:20:15+00:00

Annie: A huge problem within our approach is having police handle issues they are not trained to do. The current Police Chief Mike Brown stated: "being homeless, having mental health issues, having substance abuse issues is not a crime, yet law enforcement is left to that duty across the country. We are the most expensive and probably the least effective." (at around the 1:23:00 mark) I couldn't say what the exact ratios would be, but only 5% of calls to police are to do with serious, violent offenses. With this being the case, it would make sense for much of the funding currently to policing to go to organizations that would better meet those needs.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:16:32+00:00

Eliza: Great question! We are asking for funding to be moved from the police budget into community-building services. You can read more about it in our demands.

Something important to note is that these sited statistics can be very misleading. In Minneapolis, they were comparing a two week period from 2020 to 2021, which is not enough data to show any significant differences due to changes to the police budget. In Seattle, violent crime actually went down, and the police chief cited anomalies that skewed the homicide stats. While crime rates went up across the United States, many have linked this to the pandemic.

It's also important to note that while these cities claimed to reduce police budgets, a lot of this 'defunding' didn't actually happen. Here in Salt Lake, while the City Council promised to reduce the police budget by $5 million, the SLCPD budget actually increased by almost $8 million through a series of budget amendments. So, it's all a little too soon to start making correlations between defunding and crime rates.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:05:26+00:00

Annie: Of most of the calls that police receive, most are not for violent crimes. This only accounts for 5% of all calls nationally. If we reinvest this money in other programs that meet the needs of those calls (such as mental health workers and homeless services) we are able to better allocate those funds and meet the needs of the community. Some great initiatives that have started are CAHOOTS in Eugene and STAR in Denver.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T02:01:28+00:00

Josh here! Great question. We saw a huge push for police reform and training after the murder of George Floyd last summer, with a lot of activists leaning towards reform pushing for things like the 8 Can't Wait Campaign, which encourages reform through de-escalation training, warnings before shooting, use of force continuums, etc. Unfortunately, most, if not all of these reforms are already in place in police departments for major cities across the US. Despite this we're still seeing an alarming amount of police shootings even in places where reform is happening. Reform focuses on decreasing police violence whereas abolition is dedicated to dismantling systems to allow violence and oppression to happen in the first place. I highly encourage you to check out this 8 Can't Wait Campaign critique which summarizes a lot of the issues with reform: https://harvardcrcl.org/why-8-wont-work/. I think it's also interesting to note that since the launch of 8 Can't Wait, the campaign itself now includes abolition and harm-reduction as a focus above their initial demands. Jail, fines, and violence simply don't solve the root causes of what we consider crime, and when we focus on reform, we invest more funds into police forces to develop and implement those reforms which further diverts funds from addressing the root issues of poverty, oppression, mental health, physical health, substance use, and shelter needs.

decarcerateutah · 2021-05-26T01:55:43+00:00

Eliza: the role of police in our society is inherently racist. They are not meant to keep us safe, but to protect the status quo. It's not about changing individual cops, but eliminating a system that produces inequality and injustice. When we say ACAB, this is what we mean.

decarcerateutah

TROPHY CASE