■■ topic paper – police practices
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DA – urban abandonmentIncreased resources for police trades off with social programs and a focus on urban developmentMEEKS professor Criminology, Criminal Justice & Emergency Management @ Cal. State University Long Beach 2006 (Daryl, “Police Militarization in Urban Areas: The Obscure War Against the Underclass”, The Black Scholar, Vol 35 No 4, Winter, p.34, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] In times of conservative fiscal policy, budgetary constraints, and governmental defunding, increases in funding for law enforcement and legislated subsidies for the poor can only be sustained through a comb nation of tax cuts and defunding of social programs that provide assistance to the urban underclass and the neediest in our society. ////Post-September 11th social policies have served to further exacerbate the suffering of the inner-city urban underclass, as federal, state, and local governments accelerate their defunding of domestic social programs that benefit this isolated class, in order to shift funds to the wars on terror and crime and other national security interests. A policy once focused on the social and economic revitalization and rehabilitation of urban communities and the development of human capital, has become a policy that appears to be focused on the control of the social and criminal behavior of the inner-city urban underclass. Edward G. Goetz (1996) provides support for this premise as he theorizes that not since early in the Carter administration has there been a serious attempt at creating or implementing a domestic urban policy that focuses on significant revitalization and rehabilitation of urban metropolitan areas. In his review of a study by David B. Robertson and Dennis R. Judd (1989), Goetz observed that in their argument there was a sense that urban areas were not valuable cultural, social, or economic units except to the degree to which they could contribute to a healthy national economy, which might explain the demonstrative shift in urban policy away from revitalization and rehabilitation to governmental support for suburban development.//// According to Goetz, other recent studies have theorized that government support has, through legislation and policy changes, facilitated the migration of business and human capital, in the form of employable adults, out from old inner-city urban areas and into more dynamic and productive suburban areas. This migration occurred just as major urban redevelopment programs began to be reduced or altogether eliminated, thus further isolating urban metropolitan areas from full participation in the domestic economy.//// Goetz noted that this apparent shift in domestic urban policy was characterized by the absence of debate on major issues impacting urban areas, just as the deindustri- alization of urban metropolitan areas gained strength. According to Goetz, the once active and engaging debate on urban problems such as poverty, poor public educational systems, accessible and adequate healthcare, and possible solutions for these social ills was replaced by a public treatise on the declining moral state of the urban underclass, the need for welfare reform, and crime control. This shift in urban policy, accompanied by the absence of substantive debate on the state of urban regression, cultivated the development of a national antagonism towards the urban underclass, which provided a tacit cover for the government's defunding of urban social programs for the underclass. Any increase in funds for policing the ‘war on crime’ feeds into a policy paradigm that targets minorities and trades off with social programsMEEKS professor Criminology, Criminal Justice & Emergency Management @ Cal. State University Long Beach 2006 (Daryl, “Police Militarization in Urban Areas: The Obscure War Against the Underclass”, The Black Scholar, Vol 35 No 4, Winter, p.36,, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] Markus D. Dubber (2001) posed that over the past thirty years the war on crime trans- formed the American justice system into a practice of threat elimination and minimization, and that the inner-city urban under- class had become both enemy and victim in the American justice system's war on crime. The urban underclass has fallen victim to the enforcement of Social Darwinist policies, which have served to economically marginalize, socially isolate, disenfranchise, and minimize their participation in the American economic system. Dubber succinctly posed, "What good are the time honored principles of Anglo-American criminal law if they can so easily be pressed into service in a war on crime, resulting once again in the mass internment of enemy minorities, this time on an even larger scale?" (p. 996). A war on crime or a war on the urban underclass? It is vital that future research examines the social implications and consequences of such a sig- nificant urban policy shift as the new millennium begins. As increased federal funding is shifted to the war on crime, less funding is available for the social programs that ameliorate the problems of the urban underclass. The failure to understand the implications of the war on crime and its social consequences could have long-term negative effects on the urban underclass for several decades. On-case – generalPolice circumvent - generalPolice push back on the plan – they resist/circumvent new changesCAPPS writer at CityLab 2014 (Kriston, also former senior editor at Architect magazine, “8 Ways to Get Serious About Police Reform”, http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/12/how-to-get-serious-about-police-reform/383395/, note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] Roman isn't willing to go as far as some: He doesn't necessarily agree with Vox's Matthew Yglesias, for example, that an armed constabulary (and the armed population at large) is the root of America's problem with police killings. The proliferation of guns plays a critical role. So does the nation's history of white supremacy. And so do other deep-seated, historical, structural problems.//// As for a single cause for widespread police-shootings in the U.S.—one that its government might be willing to address, anyway—Roman cites the fundamental lack of central law-enforcement oversight. Law-enforcement agencies are simply resistant to instruction that would help local law enforcement police better.//// "We have fought from the beginning of our nation against the idea of federal policing. I think we are witnessing some of the results of a failure to have any national coordination of policing agencies," Roman says. "I'm not advocating for a nationalized police force, but I am advocating for some accountability." Download 1 Mb. Share with your friends:
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