The Cambridge Decolonising Criminology Network is hosting its first ever panel discussion on 'The Future of Policing: Decolonise? Defund? or Reimagine?'.
Please find below the details of the event along with the panelists' information:
Panelist 1: Professor Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center & Author of the End of Policing.
Topic: Academic Complicity with Policing
The demand from the Movement for Black Lives has been the dramatic scaling back of policing, but many criminologists continue to prop up policing through research and public statements that systematically fail to critically evaluate the effectiveness, costs, and potential alternatives to policing. This talk will discuss how defenders of policing are imbedded in symbiotic relationships with the institutions of policing through research arrangements, grants, and pathways to employment for students.
Panelist 2: Dr Peter Neyroud, Associate Professor in Evidence-based Policing and Deputy Director of the Police Executive Programme, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Topic: Refunding, Reforming and Reinventing the Police through science
Austerity policies following the 2008 Recession were followed in the UK and many European countries by unprecedented levels of cuts in police budgets and frontline staff. The cuts and police station closures have been followed by signficant consequences, such a collapse in detection rates and retreat from community policing. In England and Wales, the government has made a commitment to reverse the cuts but without a clear strategy for reform. This paper will argue that ‘refunding’ provides an opportunity to use science, notably an evidence-based approach, to reinvent policing.
Panelist 3: Robyn Maynard, Vanier scholar and PhD candidate, University of Toronto, author of Policing Black Lives (Fernwood, 2017), co-author of Rehearsals for Living (forthcoming 2022).
Topic: Defund/Dismantle/Abolish: Policing Black life in Canada
This talk will provide a historical analysis of the establishment and proliferation of policing and carceral controls in Canada, with particular attention to the racial and gendered contours of the criminalization of Black life. After establishing the relationship between racial capitalism and the development and proliferation of the wide-spanning surveillance and incarceration of Black communities in slavery’s afterlife, the talk will provide the groundwork for the creation of futures free from police and policing both in Canada and within a broader global context.
Facilitator: Dr Justice Tankebe, Associate Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Please register in advance for this meeting: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvf-Gprz8tG9WZcI9m-uCxeXu2yQpO24iv
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event.