1. Aren't some things police do.. good , like keeping hard drugs and sex offenders and murderers off the street? Why wouldn't we then look at the police as a nuanced institution that has problems but isn't inherently bad per se ? 2. Idk like .. it's hard for me to translate "police serve the interests of the rich" into everyday examples like I'm just a poor full time college student living in a city haha you know? I find a lot of left discourse is hard to make relevant.
I have a few more points to make before getting into your specific questions.
This is a really good example of why solidarity is really important. Just because you personally might not experience a particular type of oppression (though you might experience others), doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. Its important to listen to and try to understand people who do. But even if you personally have trouble with that, there’s a lot of objective information and statistics to back up what they’re saying.
Institutionalized police forces are relatively new historically speaking, and were created during the industrial revolution to deal with striking workers in England and the American north, and as slave patrols in the american south. They were literally created to serve the interests of rich capitalists and slave owners.
To this day they perform the role of suppressing mass protest movements, and feeding a prison industrial complex that maintains racism and slavery. Private prisons profit immensely from this arrangement. Check out this ask I answered a while back. The entire system targets poor and black people to such an insanely disproportionate degree its impossible to argue its not simply a racist institution that carries out class war in the name of the rich.
1. First off prisons are an awful way to deal with drug issues. 22% of people are in federal and state prisons for non-violent drug related crimes. They haven’t hurt anyone, they’re there as a result of a bullshit war on drugs that disproportionately targets (you guessed it!) black and poor individuals. Drug related incarceration rates in the U.S. are nine times greater for young African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 years (source), even though on average white people use more drugs than African-Americans. (Source) Aside from this. prisons make AWFUL rehabilitation facilities for drug users. 60 to 80 percent of drug abusers commit a new crime (typically a drug-driven crime) after release from prison. Approximately 95 percent return to drug abuse after release from prison. (source) So if you are actually concerned about rehabilitating users of hard drugs, prisons and law enforcement is not the way to do it. Providing resources and physiological help to addicts who want it, in a safe environment where they don’t feel trapped or forced into it, one that doesn’t ruin your life and any chance of getting a future job and/or home, would be a much better approach.
As far as sex offenders and murderers are concerned, it would go along way to address the social causes of these crimes. Change our patriarchal and sex alienated society, and far less of these crimes will be committed. Provide people with material support, education, and institutions to help those who need it and far less crimes in general will be committed. There will always be some, but few enough to allow more localized, community organized approaches to crime that focus on conflict resolution and rehabilitation.
2. I’ve provided some examples of police enforcing the interests of the rich above. If you want to get personal experience of this, go to some protests and watch the police tear gas and shoot rubber bullets into unarmed peaceful crowds. Get a sense of what it feels like to run for your life from people who you’ve been told are there to protect you. Talk to almost any Black, Native, or Hispanic person about their personal experiences with the police, I guarantee you they have something to say. Listen to people who experience things you don’t, try to empathize.
