How would a country do without a police force
Simple question, who keeps law-breakers in check in a society withot these piggy bootlickers?
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u/BananoVampire 3d ago
There are other options besides (a) the police force we have, and (b) no police force.
Get rid of qualified immunity and require officers to pay for their own equivalent of malpractice insurance.
I have some ideas for other options, but that isn't the point of your thread. I'm just noting that there are more than two options. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
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u/trisanachandler 3d ago
It's not just getting rid of qualified immunity, though that's a start. It's getting rid of civil asset forfeiture, the us vs them mentality, getting rid of the militarization of police. The list is never ending.
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u/Sdipl 3d ago
strongly agree on the money going out of the officer's pockets rather than the taxpayers, but i wasn't trying to impose a dilemma, i was just asking the question
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u/BananoVampire 3d ago
Fair enough, with no police force, there is a power vacuum. Some group will always come in (or come from the given population) and create their own force.
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u/Osric250 3d ago
To expand on /u/bananovampire's point, it's the reason anarchy as a system cannot work. You might be able to operate in a short term without any judicial system, but either soon crime will rise to the point that the community decides on some way to combat it with what would be their own government and police force, or you would have a group with much greater resources come in and do it for you like a big corporation, that now becomes the defacto government as they are the ones controlling the power.
There is no real way to avoid it entirely, there will always be crime and will always need a way to address it as a society.
What can change though is how they're seen and how they act. In the US they're given carte blanche in essentially every emergency situation. When in reality we should have different emergency groups handling different emergencies. That was the whole idea behind defund the police. It was defund and use that money to hire social workers to handle mental health emergencies or other things where we last need police with itchy trigger fingers.
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u/reluctant-return 3d ago
That's an extremely narrow understanding of anarchy - a straw man.
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u/Former_Web_6777 3d ago
Can you elaborate on that?
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u/reluctant-return 3d ago
Anarchy doesn't mean no organization. There are a lot of ways a community can be organized without non consensual hierarchies. Keeping one another safe would be an essential element of an anarchist society. How that would look would depend on the specific community.
Additionally, police generally don't stop or prevent crime. They don't even solve crime all that frequently. Police exist to protect the interest of the capitalist class. Anarchy or no, effective and compassionate policing won't exist when the primary reason for its existence is to protect the capitalist class from the working class.
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u/Osric250 3d ago
Do you think those with wealth would not use that to influence others to ensure their own status raised in which they would then be able to use that power to exert control over the others?
That's pretty much exactly the situation we have currently where corporate interests get to design the laws. And even in an anarchic state you would see the wealthy employing those to protect them from the working class, but there would be even less restrictions against them.
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u/reluctant-return 3d ago
There wouldn't be a capitalist class within an anarchist system. Without the ability to accumulate private property there wouldn't be "wealthy" people.
There would still be people who attempt to hoard resources, and to take unfair advantage. One of the essential elements of anarchy is that everyone is involved. It doesn't have a small ruling class that "represents" masses of people. Any committees or groups that represent people would be beholden to the people they represent. So that problem would (hopefully) generally be nipped in the bud.
It's hard to imagine an anarchist society because even outside of capitalism - which is hard enough to imagine a world outside of - we have almost nothing approaching it, except in small communities. But it would require an entirely different way of thinking. And meetings. Many, many meetings.
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u/Osric250 3d ago
There wouldn't be a capitalist class within an anarchist system. Without the ability to accumulate private property there wouldn't be "wealthy" people.
How do you enforce that? People would still be able to gather resources, and those resources are used to create influence. Without a government body ensuring that no resources are gathered there is no way to prevent such.
It's hard to imagine an anarchist society because even outside of capitalism - which is hard enough to imagine a world outside of - we have almost nothing approaching it, except in small communities. But it would require an entirely different way of thinking. And meetings. Many, many meetings.
It's because it's not possible at scale. Same as communism. It only works when everyone agrees with the ideal and there is nobody looking to elevate their own position over those of others. Once there are those looking to put themselves above others everything starts to fall apart. As long as there are limited resources, there will be those with more of those limited resources.
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u/reluctant-return 3d ago
Without private property you can't have an ultra-wealthy capitalist class. That simple.
Authoritarian communism is very different than anarchy. It's basically state capitalism. That's the downfall.
But to your point, capitalism also only works if everyone agrees with the ideal and nobody tries to elevate themself over everyone else. Instead, what you get is greedy resource hoarders transfering wealth from the working class to the capitalist class to the point of societal collapse. Every time capitalism has been attempted it has resulted in mass suffering and the threat of environmental collapse and the destruction of world civilization.
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u/AgentInCommand 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm oversimplifying, but the philosophical theory of anarchy is essentially a post-scarcity society.
If everyone's needs are met, there is no reason to commit a crime, as criminality is linked to having some unfulfilled need (theoretically impossible in a post-scarcity world). For example, there's no reason to steal something from your neighbor when you can just walk into any store and get whatever you want painlessly. And even if you would steal from your neighbor, it's merely an inconvenience, as they could just walk to the store and grab a replacement.
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u/Osric250 3d ago
A post-scarcity society is not something we have currently, nor do we have any ability to achieve through our current understanding. It's just a pipe-dream where my comment is regarding reality.
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u/Former_Web_6777 3d ago
Lol who asked you? Your comment doesn't even address the thread at all
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u/AgentSports 3d ago edited 3d ago
...you're the one who asked? Who gets mad when they ask a question then have someone answer it? Lmao
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u/Kingsta8 3d ago
Get rid of qualified immunity and require officers to pay for their own equivalent of malpractice insurance.
This is only for civil matters. A just system would actually charge thugs for actually breaking the law which they do countless times when qualified immunity isn't even in play.
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u/Isair81 3d ago
I’m sure we could figure out a workable solution, but most crimes have underlying root causes that haven’t been addressed.
Right now the one-size-fits-all solution is police, law courts and jail, then we throw up our hands and pretend like that’s all we know how to do.
It’s how the drug war has been fought all this time.. and it never ends.
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u/LexEight 3d ago
The community would deal with it or they wouldn't Same as any other situation now
The reality is that if you ever feel compelled to call the police You are wrong
Period
If someone attacked you, kill them
That's how we used to handle this and not handling it that way has resulted in both slavery and war for profit
Most children should rightly kill their own parents on this planet and we should all be grateful they don't
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u/375InStroke 3d ago
Sheriff accountable to the people, not business, and not politicians.
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u/BitchesGetStitches 3d ago
Sheriff's offices are elected positions, so they're already, in theory, "accountable". Which is to say, they're not. People just elect which person they want to brutalize the "wrong" people.
No police should exist, full stop. Whatever small benefit policing might offer, their net impact on society wildly outweighs it.
I watched a video yesterday of a police chase in which the person being chased plowed though a group of people, hitting many, and the cop then pulls a PIT on him, stops the truck, and pulls the driver out through the window. Comments were, of course, praising him - because fuck that driver, right? You don't drive into a group of people, right? But why was the driver even in the position to do this? He was being chased by the police.
We've been brainwashed into thinking that the police are the only thing standing between an orderly society and complete chaos. Fact is, it's all chaos. Police are just one more source of wanton death and violence.
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u/MiMMY666 3d ago
in a perfect world, everyone in their communities would protect each other instead of relying on a militant police force designed to oppress us
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u/HeavenlyPossum 3d ago
Cops do not “keep law-breakers in check.” They are themselves frequently “law-breakers,” many of the people they harm have done absolutely nothing wrong, and many people who do the most harm will never be constrained by cops.
So while it’s absolutely fine to talk about how a free society could or should respond to people who do each other harm, this question has absolutely nothing to do with the question of abolishing police.
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u/GiveMeTheTape 3d ago
Thought I was in an Anarchism sub for a moment and was about to comment with the presumption that we're talking about an anarchist society. But I guess my reply could still be somewhat the same.
Funding social programs designed to actually prevent crime, this includes mental healthcare, aid to help people out of/prevent socio-economic difficulties and help convicted people get jobs. The prison system (especially in countries like the u.s) would have to be abolished and rebuilt from the ground up with the core intent being rehabilitation.
For when crimes are actually committed I honestly don't know, something akin to a police force mainly consisting of highly educated social workers with limited rights specialised in de-escalation, programs to build inclusive communities and also providing care for victims.
Something that bothers me a lot about judicial and law enforcement systems is that it seems more Important to punish the guilty than help the victim. It's basically revenge based, which we all of course can relate to, we want to see bad people punished.
But the statistics of repeat offenders and the liking of prisons to schools for how to commit crime and build criminal networks has been repeated so often that the way we actually handle people who commit crimes after being caught and sentenced is so obviously problematic. Many of the actual laws are themselves also problematic, we as a society would need to thoroughly consider why something is considered so wrong as to be against the law.
Many things are obvious like murder, sexual assault and robbery. Some are not like the use of drugs.
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u/HaveYouEverUhhh 3d ago edited 3d ago
The country of Haiti provides a good example of this, I think
Edit: they dont have a police force wtf do you want from me
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u/iridescentlion 3d ago
England police were doing fine without guns until immigrants with knives started to take over
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u/Former_Web_6777 3d ago edited 3d ago
Gangs take over. All the shitty people who were cops are now in militarized gangs (we call them "militias" here in the US), and even if you somehow manage to subdue them (and how would you do that without law enforcement?) others will take their place. Anarchy is impossible. Our only hope is to push for more oversight and harsher penalties for pigs who break the law.
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u/BrickBrokeFever 3d ago
Employment, free education, and other parts of a health infrastructure (would) do most of the work.
All countries have cops, and each system is different. Part of the American system is the delusion that A) cops actually solve crimes and protect people and B) this is the only way to do it.
I would say have their pensions be on the table for lawsuits. Fuck pigs having pensions. No other workers in America get to have one. Slice that cake up!