What Is Public Safety?
Definitions:
Carceral: “of, relating to or suggesting a jail or prison” the carceral state as “the policing, monitoring, surveillance, criminalization, and incarceration of people”
While we often use the words security and safety interchangeably, they do describe two different things surrounding harm and danger. Security tends to refer to the efforts of a group to protect members from harm. Safety often means a personal feeling of being liberated from harm and/or danger.
When it comes to safety and security regarding crime, it is easy to miscalculate which institutions are truly accountable for our security. We tend to believe the military industrial complex (MIC) is responsible for national security and we use those feelings of safety to justify the violence and harm that system perpetuates. Similarly, police, the guns they wield and prisons can bring us feelings of safety without providing true security. Mariame Kaba explains our often flawed understanding as “even though we know that horrible things continue to happen all the time … these very tools and the corresponding institutions are reproducing the violence and horror they are supposed to contain.”
This is common and reflective of societal structures and environmental factors. Through economic and social policies, the state manufactures insecurity and advances perceptions of “carceral safety” which are achievable only through the means of policing, prisons, and banishment (See No More Police by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie, p. 180).
The perceptions of safety put forth by the state are also levied on how the public perceives crime. Visible social problems or social disorder are often perceived as crime or indicative of “high crime” areas. Things such as houselessness, shoplifting, and even graffiti are regarded as disorder as they do not fit the structure society has deemed appropriate. This social disorder is commonly defined as a public safety concern. Having been taught that police are responsible for our safety, it feels completely reasonable to us that police must respond to concerns which threaten the order and safety of the public. Even more dangerous, police also believe this propaganda (or copaganda). There is a reliance of communities and society on police and carceral solutions to create an illusion of safety to the things we perceive as fear and a continual failed approach of relying on the state for security.
Removing perceptions of public safety issues by addressing what are actually public health and human rights issues, removes the need for a security force which for so few actually provide safety. As Alex Vitale points out, “Policing is a way to allow politicians to get away with not meeting people’s basic needs.” Illusory carceral safety is meant to lull us into “passively delegating responsibility for producing safety to police, prosecutors, and prisons, and accepting the violence they perpetrate as the inevitable price for safety” (Kaba and Ritchie).
Who might define public safety? The steadily increasing number of people who do not report their violent victimizations because they feel the police will not or can not help? The over five million children who have experienced a parent being incarcerated? Who is responsible and accountable for public safety? The police officers who continually traumatize, brutalize, murder, and oppress members of our community; disproportionately those who are Black, Indengious, People of Color and poor individuals. Private security companies who profit from the distrust of society?
Rather than presenting things such as houselessness, littering/dumping, or public order crime (e.g., graffiti, illegal sex work, disorderly behavior) as something to be feared and therefore criminalized, we should approach it as something to be treated or funded. As Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie propose, “What might genuine safety look like if it were not premised on the necessity of police to maintain existing racialized, gendered, and ableist relations of power, and instead built around ideas like thriving, flourishing, and well-being?”
“Homelessness” is a prominent “public safety” concern/theme, but will (more) police officers solve a housing issue? Or will officers simply act as agents of force to remove “aggressive panhandling” and “homeless encampments” and have more presence to assure residents with houses they are nearby to react to a perceived or actual public safety issue.
Additional police capacity does not look at how something has prevented a houseless individual from contributing economically to their community. Very rarely is this a choice but instead socioeconomic factors that make it nearly impossible, both financially and ethically. The Federal Reserve suggests nearly half (42%) of Americans reported they would be unable to pay for a $400 unanticipated expense. Despite working full-time, 35% of families in America do not reach the qualifications necessary which covers the budget of basic family needs. This includes rent, food, transportation, medical care, minimal household expenses). Additionally, 53% of sheltered and 40.4% of unsheltered individuals suffering from houselessness are formally employed.
Conditional housing programs which also assist in the narrative of individual behavior change and serve to rationalize the tackling of anti-social behaviors have detrimental impacts. There programs often require participants to either abstain from certain behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, violence) before accessing housing and/or maintain particular conditions (e.g., mental health treatment, sobriety) once housed. Non-conditional housing programs are most effective for enhancing housing stability. Providing individuals with immediate access to housing with supportive case management results in a significantly longer period of adequate housing.
What we should all agree on is that a place in which someone is prevented from having a house is a systemic problem. Is public safety ensuring people sleeping unsheltered are out of eyesight or is it ensuring that people are housed and safe to live?
Disorderly conduct in most states results in a misdemeanor offense with a penalty of jail time, probation, and/or a fine varying up to $1000. Laws differ significantly throughout state and local governments offering diverse and broad understandings of what qualifies as disorderly conduct under the law. We have become comfortable in a society where we find it appropriate to subject an individual making “noise that is unreasonable” to the direct and collateral consequences of the carceral system. Most commonly, a criminal record creates barriers to employment, housing, and education. This is not protecting people from harm (i.e., safety) but instead afflicting it for life.
Access to healthcare has been correlated with a decrease in violent and property crime. Providing substance-abuse-treatment facilities has also proved to result in reductions in violent and financially motivated crimes. Though the “public safety” issue of drug use often receives a response of “criminal” proportion.
Addressing the structural problems which have over time warped our understandings of harm, safety, crime, and humanity starts with redefining terms like “public safety.” We should be asking if we are doing the proper work to address the root causes for which residents are requesting mediators (i.e., the police).
It is imperative to understand that our own perceptions of safety are not worth compromising the true security of ourselves and others. We must redefine public safety in order to bring security to everyone.