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Abstract
Since the Ferguson and Baltimore uprisings, legal scholarshiphas undergone a profound reckoning with police violence. Theemerging structural account of police violence recognizes that it isroutine, legal, takes many shapes, and targets people based on theirrace, class, and gender. But legal scholarship remains fixated oninvesting in the police to repair and relegitimize their social functionwithout paying sufficient attention to alternate frameworks for reform.The 2020 uprisings sparked by the police killing of George Floydmobilized demands rooted in prison abolitionist organizing thatprovide another way forward. In contrast to conventional reform, thecalls to defund and dismantle the police confront head-on the violence,scale, and power of the police, and therefore aim to redress policeviolence by diminishing the scale, scope, and legitimacy of policefunction. These calls are an important aspect of a practical agendaaimed at eliminating prisons and police and building modes ofcollective care and social provision—where reform is one essentialstrategy.
In this Article, I identify a growing disjuncture between thedeepening recognition of the violence at the heart of policing and thepersistence of a reform agenda that advances investments in police. Iargue that a structural critique of police violence demands that we takeseriously an abolitionist horizon for reform projects. I unpack theimplications of an abolitionist approach and identify paths forward forlegal scholarship.