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THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA1

THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA1 THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani INTRODUCTION Since 2014, viral images of Black people being killed at the hands of the police—Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and many, many others—have convinced much of the public that the American criminal legal system is broken. In the summer of 2020, nation- wide protests against police racism and violence in the wake of George Floyd’smurderwere, according to some analysts, the largest social movement in the history of the United States. Activists and academics have demanded defunding the police and reallocating the funds to 3 4 substitutes or alternatives. And others have called for abolishing the police altogether. It has become common knowledge that the police do not solve serious crime, they focus far too much on petty offenses, and they are far too heavy-handed and brutal in their treatment of Americans—especially poor, Black people. This is the so-called paradox of under-protection and over-policing that has characterized American law enforcement since emancipation. The American criminal legal system is unjust and inefficient. But, as we argue in this essay, over-policing is not the problem. In fact, http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Journal of Law and Equality MIT Press

THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA1

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Publisher
MIT Press
Copyright
© 2022 Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).
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2694-5711
DOI
10.1162/ajle_a_00030
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Abstract

THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA AMERICAN JOURNAL of LAW and EQUALITY THE INJUSTICE OF UNDER-POLICING IN AMERICA Christopher Lewis and Adaner Usmani INTRODUCTION Since 2014, viral images of Black people being killed at the hands of the police—Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and many, many others—have convinced much of the public that the American criminal legal system is broken. In the summer of 2020, nation- wide protests against police racism and violence in the wake of George Floyd’smurderwere, according to some analysts, the largest social movement in the history of the United States. Activists and academics have demanded defunding the police and reallocating the funds to 3 4 substitutes or alternatives. And others have called for abolishing the police altogether. It has become common knowledge that the police do not solve serious crime, they focus far too much on petty offenses, and they are far too heavy-handed and brutal in their treatment of Americans—especially poor, Black people. This is the so-called paradox of under-protection and over-policing that has characterized American law enforcement since emancipation. The American criminal legal system is unjust and inefficient. But, as we argue in this essay, over-policing is not the problem. In fact,

Journal

American Journal of Law and Equality – MIT Press

Published: Aug 15, 2022

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