UC Irvine Law Review

What logics underlie the call to “defund the police,” and how do those logics matter in policy debate? In the wake of widespread protests after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police violence during the summer of 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement’s call to “defund the police” captured the national imagination. Several municipal governments promised to cut funding and contracts for their respective police departments, with mixed results. Because we expect police defunding and reinvestment to remain a central movement demand, this Article explores the demand’s discursive and normative terrain. It does so by describing and critically engaging three logics of criminal system alternatives that we have observed in activists’ demands and organizing efforts. Specifically, we theorize investments in social welfare, safety production, and racial reparation as deeply connected but distinct logics that might guide decisions about where and how money should be spent as part of defund initiatives, and we discuss some implications of each for transformational change within and beyond policing.

This Article examines the untapped potential of Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commissions to protect communities that experience police misconduct and discrimination. POST commissions, which are created by state laws and exist in all fifty states, have broad authority to regulate police officers and police departments. POST commissions determine eligibility and qualifications for police employment and regulate the content of training officers receive. Most POST commissions can also revoke certification of officers who commit serious misconduct or fail to meet continuing eligibility requirements set by the commissions. In some states, they can also impose statewide, compulsory reforms to policing policy. POST commissions have yet to fulfill their potential to protect the public from harmful police behaviors because (1) they lack clear legislative or organizational mandates to protect the public against unethical or unjust policing and (2) their membership tends to be dominated by law enforcement officials with little or no input from the communities that are most burdened by aggressive and discriminatory policing. If legislatures address these structural problems, POST commissions could regulate policing to protect communities from police abuse and misconduct.

Current efforts at police reform focus on heightening the legal accountability of police officers when they engage in questionable behavior. While valuable, such reforms do not address the underlying problems in police organizations that lead to problems with the use of force. This paper highlights the desirability of shifting from a warrior culture, one built around gaining compliance through the threat or use of force, to a guardian- or service-oriented culture, one focused on gaining acceptance by building trust and confidence among people in the community. Beyond changing the dynamics of authority in police-civilian encounters, this new model of policing promotes a climate of reassurance within communities that promotes their social, economic, and political vitality. Instead of focusing on harm reduction via crime control, the police can have a positive role in helping communities develop their way out of crime. Taking up that role requires the police to move from a harm reduction model to a model based upon creating and sustaining public trust.

This Note presents prison abolition theory and discusses how principles of abolition can be applied in the context of immigration enforcement and reform. In doing so, this Note argues for an “open borders” approach to immigration, presents several viewpoints on what such a regime may look like, and discusses how this vision can shape immigration reform efforts. In applying abolition theory to the immigration legal system, this Note uses a framework of three tenets of prison abolition. First, the assumptions upon which our current system of immigration enforcement is based, such as public safety and economic justifications, are open to questioning, and an alternate approach to migration is possible. Second, the immigration system exacts a human cost and infringes upon human dignity in ways that cannot be justified. Third, reform efforts are most effective when they envision a world beyond the current system of enforcement, rather than expanding the machinery of current enforcement efforts or merely shifting who is the target of immigration enforcement. Though it seems difficult to envision life without it, immigration enforcement as we know it is a recent invention and in many ways has proven ineffective at achieving its own purported goals. Further, the system results in significant human suffering in a myriad of ways, from the exploitation of those without status, to detention, to deportation, and beyond. As such, reform efforts that focus on who should be subject to immigration enforcement or how such enforcement should be carried out miss the opportunity to ask whether such enforcement should have a place in our society at all.

Olmstead v. L.C. ex rel. Zimring established that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990’s integrated-care mandate requires the government to make reasonable accommodations to protect the right of people with disabilities to live in the most integrated setting possible. In response, counties began releasing people from restrictive mental-health institutions but did not provide the necessary resources, such as supportive housing and outpatient care, to allow people to live successfully in their communities. As many people contending with disabilities were left homeless and the United States increased its reliance on incarceration, shuttered mental-health institutions gave way to jails and prisons. Olmstead litigation focused on decarceration could establish counties’ legal obligation to release eligible people from jails and prisons and to provide them with mental-health care in their communities.

This Note seeks to provoke a conversation about the rise in power of federal prosecutors at the expense of district court judges, focusing on the controlled-substances context. While referencing Robert Cover’s portrayal of the justice system as a “pyramid of violence,” this Note shows how the federal mandatory-minimum sentencing laws and the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s Sentencing Guidelines brought about this change. These sentencing schemes have anchored what prosecutors and judges deem an appropriate sentence. Prosecutors are thinking about sentences while deciding what charges to bring. After a discussion about sentencing legislation and current sentencing procedures, this Note identifies a need for reform in the federal criminal justice system. The elimination of mandatory sentencing laws, the normalization of departure from the Guidelines, and the creation of the executive prosecutor role are reforms identified in this Note.