Hi, I'm not sure if any of you have read Murder in the Tool Library (a quite good solarpunk murder mystery, I think) but I'm working on a story with an investigation and I'm wondering how close AE Marling's answers are to being a drop-in solution for that particular concept, and sort of whether it passes basic scrutiny by anarchists.
If you haven't read it, the basic idea is that the setting's eutopian city doesn't have a police force but it does have a large and active civilian investigative society which normally investigates more mundane situations but can be temporarily empowered with access to additional information by the community on a case-by-case basis, such as when someone is murdered for seemingly no reason. They lacked any sort of qualified immunity and the community seemed to have an existing system based around rehabilitation and restitution that they answered to. It seemed to be very croudsourcing-oriented but members had to pass a fairly-strict qualification process to screen out those who would misuse their access.
They also seemed to have a much broader scope of what they normally investigated than the modern day police do (finding lost pets and such), as crimes seemed to be much more rare in the setting, given the other safety nets available to catch things earlier.
So I suppose most of my questions are around does this seem viable to you? When I asked some of these questions on the xmpp channel it was pointed out that an organization charged with investigating crimes outside its own members but at least nominally accountable to the community is police under another name, which is probably fair. So I guess my question boils down to: are there anarchist answers to how to do policing?
The anarchist manifestos I've tried seemed to be listing all the problems with modern police, which I agree with, and saying that if you solve all of society's other problems you won't need police, prisons etc. which, I don't really doubt that but it also doesn't feel attainable to me. Especially when one of my most frequently-reused comments over on the subreddit is explaining that yes you can still have conflicts (and thus story plots) in a better, more eutopian society. All kinds of crimes, shortcuts and disagreements can arise without desperate necessity and even between people who 95% agree with each other.
So is there a halfway-to-utopia answer?
Part of the trouble is that though my story centers around an investigation (a treasure hunt for thousands of tons of industrial waste illegally dumped decades earlier, and a modern day conspiracy to cover it up and block the investigation), I have a lot less room for deep dives into the organization itself. Marling was able to devote much of his story to exploring a lot of concepts and nuances around the abolishment of police and prisons, how they try to screen for people with sociopathic or abusive tendencies and how the investigative society still has some hierarchy which puts it at risk to people who prioritize ladder climbing and power, (long with the nuts and bolts of how things might be done when the worst case scenario happens and someone commits murder despite all the other social safety nets).
So thanks for reading my question, and for any thoughts you might have. I guess I'm wondering if this existing idea seems basically viable, and what specifics you'd want called out where I can fit them. If you think it doesn't work, I'd be very interested in any alternatives (and I'm happy to read relevant articles, screeds, manifestos etc!). Thanks
I was going to write down some similar points, so I thank you for writing instead of me and upvote.
Some additional notes:
I like the concept that stopping violence and investigating crimes are separate jobs, with separate qualifications. Stopping violence is a time-critical job (one must prevent injury or loss of life, restore everyone's freedom of choice and if possible, normal life) and may require both skills of negotiation and using non-lethal violence (it is highly important not to escalate or do irreversible harm). Investigating is a whole different business.
Stopping violence in a future society likely has both a local component (the first to arrive upon an emergency broadcast are those who live nearby).
Stopping some forms of violence in a future society is very likely highly technical (an person reasonably trained in martial arts is expected to be capable of doing air surveillance, identifying a drone or determining and logging that it refuses to identify, subsequently producing an EMP or using a microwave / laser / kinetic air defense effector). The same would apply for ground rovers or surface / subsurface drones which behave agressively. Assaulting a person with hands, a sharp object or slug thrower would be considered a very antiquated flavour of violent crime.
A key question in the development of "law enforcement" (or whatever comes after it) will probably be: how to prevent loss of life. In case a person is out of control, I would expect to see unmanned systems helping with negotiation (because they have no lives to endanger) and wielding pepper spray.
I would expect unmanned systems delivering medical supplies and medical assistance literally at the pace of a missile, so I think a well equipped hospital will have few launch tubes ready with medical supplies and rescue / resuscitation robots. I think a high subsonic speed would be appropriate for arrival in most neigbourhoods, while delivery to remote locations might require supersonic speed and leaving the dense layer of the atmosphere. After a medical drone lands, I think most of them would be capable of walking, swimming or diving, and a select few might also cut or pry apart wreckage.
In case a crime has happened and violence is no longer ongoing, I like the concept that an investigative team is assembled by randomly selecting people with certain qualifications, who can call up experts if they run out of understanding. Because having the same person investigate twice or more in a row would invite foul play.
So, tehcnically my predictions veer towards something you'd get from the Culture stories by Iain M. Banks. Just without the hyperintelligent AI, because I'm not sure people would want to create that, or whether it's possible.
As for laws... that's a good one. In an anarchist society, laws are not hard-coded. Whatever social bodies deal with conflict resolution would likely not focus on the letter of any text, even if they would have a text they can refer to.
Jurisdiction is an interesting concept. In a stated society, the local state claims jurisdiction through controlling territory. Jurisdiction in anarchy would be far more messy.