this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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Before abolishing the police you need to have an idea of what is going to replace it.
This post offers no ideas.
I also wonder if they mean, abolish the current police force, or the concept of a police force.
I can understand the former, but the latter makes no sense to me.
Before abolishing slavery you need to have an idea of what is going to replace it.
This post offers no ideas.
I also wonder if they mean, abolish the current slavers, or the concept of slavery.
I can understand the former, but the latter makes no sense to me.
This is a really dumb response. The replacement for slavery is the same work just paid and without ownership of the workers.
The police are already paid, and they do things that are genuinely neccesary like crisis intervention and investigating legitimate crimes (not busting pot dealers and ticket quotas), they just do a bunch of evil and corrupt shit on top of it (and usually do a shitty job of the neccesary things as well). There does need to be something to replace those roles.
To be fair, OP's post is also a really shitty analogy because of those reasons as well.
Slavery isn't just unpaid labor, it also involves social control, and violent enforcement. “I can’t imagine society without X unless you give me a detailed replacement” is a lame way of defending the status quo. Slavery, feudalism, child labor, debtors prisons all had the same argument made for them and they skip over the question of whether the current form is legitimate or inevitable.
This was exactly what I wanted to say! Thank you!
Explain to me how ending slavery would have lead to a shooter being allowed to run rampant or a domestic abuser the ability to continue hitting their spouse?
Of course it wouldn't, because these are different issues.
Obviously the police system needs to be gutted, but they do serve a function that must be replaced. Unfortunately until people stop hurting others we need someone available to stop that violence.
And before you say it I'm not saying the police are doing a great job at that. In its current state they typically escalate the violence, or provide ineffective responses. But they do serve a role hat needs to be replaced.
When slavery was ended truthfully the roles of slaves did not need to be replaced. Slavery was a tool of the wealthiest in the South to make more money. Nothing more. Taking the wealth from the wealthy is generally better for the average person. This is also ignoring the huge moral arguments here. Slavery only has the function of making the rich richer.
Police departments and sheriff's departments do serve a purpose in society. They take on jobs that do need to be done. They are not the best way to do it, but many of their functions still need to occur, or at least until there are more systems in place. You're not going to end policing and fix society's issues in years. This would take decades
Not sure I get what your point is especially since I agree, so what's that about? Do note that slavery was defended both on economic grounds and through "public safety" arguments: fears of chaos, crime, and violence if it were abolished. "Slavery only has the function of making the rich richer." is blatantly false and honestly insulting to descendants of slaves, as it downplays the systemic permanent violent domination by a group of people onto another. [1] [2]
My comment addresses the rhetoric of “This function exists, therefore this institution is inevitable unless you provide a fully specified replacement” which is a historically common way of defending entrenched systems [3]. Abolitionists distinguish functions from institutions. Conflict resolution, harm prevention, crisis response are necessary in society, but that does not make any particular institution such as the police natural or inevitable. [4] [5]
“this would take decades” is part of the abolitionist position, it's a long-term transition project, just like phasing our nuclear power, nobody is claiming it needs to happen overnight [6]. So yeah violence exists and ways to address this must exist but none of that should be used to sidestep the question of abolishing the police. If anything, it just shows a lack of imagination for alternatives.
Edit: there's tons of other analogies to address your point, honestly, "Abolish Capitalism" doesn't mean get rid of the economic system and figure it out tomorrow morning, you're probably just hung up onto the specific set of words without trying to understand the position and strategy of abolitionists. [7]
We don't need to have the argument that slavery is wrong and causes generational trauma. That is plainly obvious, and honestly annoying that you felt the need to state that. Your goal seems more about using the existence of slavery to fuel your rhetoric than to address modern issues.
Once again, slavery and policing occupy two different "functions" (do not take this word literally) in society. There are necessary things that need to happen that a police force does. Slavery was never necessary and serves to generate wealth through human suffering. Arguably there are functions of the modern police system that do that too, and those can be stripped without replacement.
You keep trying to force a comparison between two things that cannot be compared.
Honestly it's disgusting and insulting to even try to compare these two topics.
It does not take decades to free people. It does take decades of continual investment to lift people from poverty, provide mental healthcare (really all healthcare), building rehabilitation programs, etc. It all takes time and we should absolute do it. We seem to agree there so I don't understand the disagreement. It truly seems to be you wanting to exploit the suffering of the enslaved to make your analogy
Also to be clear I am aware of modern day slavery attached to the current system. It is abhorrent and arguably evolved from the slavery practiced in the 1800s. That can absolutely be abolished tomorrow. It is not necessary and serves nothing more to generate wealth. No need to taper anything down or put any work into a new system. Get rid of it. Although, I am still uncomfortable of comparing it to the horrors of chattel slavery in the Southern United States. Slavery has existed in some form since writing was invented, and likely longer, but I can only think of maybe one or two systems equally as cruel and brutal as the system of slavery practiced in the Americas.
Edit: I think I thought of the best way to sum up my feelings. Slavery is cruel and serves no purpose in a society. It is abhorrent and should be abolished immediately. Then you work to right the wrongs.
Policing is fundamentally flawed, but a systematic approach can over time be used to incrementally replace it. Coupled with systems to eliminate the root causes of crime.
I think that's why your comparison upset me so much. I view one as something with no redeeming qualities or usefulness and find it morally repugnant. The other has some utility to society, but I find the current system repugnant. Only one of these is appropriate to slowly replace in a controlled manner. The other must be ended immediately
Yeah at this point I think we’re beyond argumentation if you're just gonna resort to moral vetoing. You’re reading it as moral comparison, and then getting upset about a claim I’m not making.
Historians and abolitionists make these structural comparisons to critique the recurring argumentation used to keep powers in place, that does not make it a moral equivalence. And in turn I’m arguing against the recurring argumentation that an institution is necessary by definition. This is what my first comment was about : when you change just a few words in stoy's comment, you highlight the systemic argumentation to keep the status quo.
Yet many studied the origins of modern day police in relation to slave patrols in the US.
I agree that conflict response, harm prevention, and crisis intervention are necessary. That does not logically mean that the police institution as it exists is necessary or inevitable. The necessity of function does not mean the necessity of the existence of whatever institution is appointed to that function. I'm just arguing against it, I feel like I keep repeating myself so let's leave it at that.
That's where you started
I don't even disagree, but that doesn't mean much once again. The invention cotton gin revived slavery in the South. Yet we still use the tool today without slavery.
Anyway that's why I favor completely gutting or even abolishing police. They are fundamentally flawed. I don't care if at the end of the day we have something still called the police, just as long as we change how its used for the benefit of society. Unlikely slavery though, I don't see an overnight dissolution of the police as necessary.
This is what I've been saying.
Also if you decide to move forward you don't need to cite facts, or even cite them 3 deep. It's unnecessary. Everything you've cited is objectively true and I have never had a disagreement with. At least save yourself some time and only cite it 1 source deep.
Yeah I mean we keep arguing on some semantics when we agree on the structural issues at play, we could have saved some time and headache haha
How about…idk instead of shooting and killing the symptoms, you could handle the root cause, police forces don’t stop crime, they respond to it, majority of the crime in the world would have been solved with good mental health services and quality of life
I mean, they are a crime deterrent at least.
if that is true, how is there still crime?
Well it's just a deterrent, not magic
i dont believe there is any way to prove crime was deterred.
What basis do you believe this? It’s measured all the time with various methods of policing being demonstrated to both deter and not deter crimes.
You can’t reductively bark “can’t prove a counterfactual 🤪” and you’ve seemingly done zero research into the matter
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8356499/
Well if you ever ask someone, "would you ever commit a crime iff you knew you could get away with it" and they say yes, you'll have found at least one example of a successfully deterred crime.
no, you didn't. you can't prove a counterfactual.
Maybe we're disagreeing on what "deterrent" means. I just mean "an incentive not to commit a crime," not "something that absolutely prevents crime." If you're just trying to prove it's an incentive at all, it's pretty easy as you only need to find one example of somebody who decided against committing a crime for fear of police.
there's no way to know what they would have decided in a world without police
OK, but then you're just saying it's purely down to your prior whether or not you think police are an effective deterrent. Which is not exactly a compelling argument against police. I was kind of hoping you had something more to lean on than that.
Sure, but that takes time and isn't fool proof. Full implementation of a program like that could take a decade. You need someone ready to respond to violent individuals.
Police forces also currently handle other things that are necessary like traffic enforcement or serving court documents. Both need to happen, neither need to be done by the police. So you have to replace that function.
Ideally you'd see many of these functions that require limited abilities to detain an individual shifted out of the police to new bodies. From there gut departments and form small bodies designed to apprehend violent criminals. Coupled with several programs aimed at actually reducing the root causes of crime.
It would take decades and a tremendous investment. Unfortunately too many people view nations as buisnesses now, so if things aren't better immediately then they give up and reverse course.