The Slow Violence of Contemporary Policing

Abstract

An estimated 60 million Americans encounter police annually and Black and Brown Americans over more than one millionmore than one million are disproportionately threatened or subjected to police use of force during these encounters. Much research exists on the efficacy for crime control of the policing practices that produce those encounters for crime control, but outside of formal consequences such as incarceration, the criminology of police harms has been slower to emerge. In this review, we describe the slow violence that contemporary policing practices disproportionately inflict on people of color. These wide-ranging harms constitute cultural trauma, shaping health, well-being, academic performance, government participation, community membership, and physical space. As a result, routine policing practices help create and maintain the racial and class status quo. We close by considering the limits of popular reforms given those harms and urge researchers to take a broader approach by studying nonpolicing alternatives to public safety alongside crime control efficacy and incorporating more critical perspectives to build a more comprehensive assessment of modern policing practices.